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“From Generation to Generation” 

Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18 

Sunday, June 28, 2026 

Rev. Rebecca DePoe 

Scripture Reading: Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18  

1 I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord,[a] forever;  

with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.  

2 I declare that your steadfast love is established forever;  

your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.  

3 You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one;  

I have sworn to my servant David:  

4 ‘I will establish your descendants forever  

and build your throne for all generations.’ ” Selah  

15 Happy are the people who know the festal shout,  

who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance;  

16 they exult in your name all day long  

and extol[a] your righteousness.  

17 For you are the glory of their strength;  

by your favor our horn is exalted.  

18 For our shield belongs to the Lord,  

our king to the Holy One of Israel.  

This is the word of the Lord, Thanks be to God.  

There is a hallway on the second floor of our church, just outside of the church office, where our history smiles at us from behind a glass display case.  

If you’ve walked by it, you’ve seen the photographs that tell the story of this congregation. Faces of pastors who served long before many of us were born. Pictures of nursery school classes and church events. Snapshots of faithful people whose lives became part of the story God was writing here.  

Sometimes I pause there for a few moments before heading into my office. I look at these photographs and wonder about the stories behind them. What challenges were they facing? What changes were they navigating? What hopes did they carry for the future of this church? 

Every one of those generations lived through seasons of uncertainty. They celebrated baptisms and mourned young men killed in a world war. They made difficult decisions. They worried about the future. They adapted to a changing world.  

And yet, through it all, they kept gathering to worship. 

Not because circumstances were always easy. I can only imagine the challenges involved in building our church in the midst of the Great Depression. But because they trusted in the faithfulness of God.  

That is the testimony we hear in today’s psalm: I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. 

The people in those photographs are part of that song. And now, so are we. Psalm 89 is, in many ways, a psalm about remembering. Remembering that before we arrived and long after we are gone, God remains faithful.  

Psalm 89 was not written from a place of ease or certainty. We often hear these words I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever and imagine someone whose life is going well. Someone whose prayers have been answered and whose future feels secure.  

But if you read the rest of Psalm 89, you discover something surprising. Later in the psalm the writer cries out in confusion and grief. The promises of God seem difficult to reconcile with present circumstances. The future feels uncertain.  

The psalmist chooses to remember God’s faithfulness because life is hard, and the future feels uncertain. And perhaps that is what makes these words so important for us today.  

Because every generation of God’s people eventually faces moments where familiar things change. Moments when the future feels unclear. Moments when we wonder what, exactly, we can count on. The psalmist answers that question by pointing not to a building, a program, a leader, or a particular season of ministry. The psalmist points to the covenant faithfulness of God. When the Psalmist says: 

I have made a covenant with my chosen one I will establish your descendants forever.  

The psalmist is reminding God’s people that their future ultimately rests not on their strength but on God’s promise.  

Every generation is tempted to believe that faithfulness means keeping everything the same. But throughout Scripture, faithfulness is not about preserving the past; it is about trusting God in the present. The foundation of our hope has never been our ability to preserve things exactly as they are. Our hope rests in the God whose steadfast love endures from generation to generation.  

That is why the psalm can say Happy are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your countenance.  

Notice what the psalmist does not say. Blessed are the people who have it all figured out. Nor does the Psalmist say Blessed are the people who can predict the future.  

No. Blessed are the people who walk in the light of God’s presence.  

Because faithfulness is not about having certainty about what comes next.  

Faithfulness is about trusting the One who walks with us into whatever comes next.  

This week I spent some time looking at the historical display outside my office. One photograph in particular caught my attention. It’s a picture of the Ladies’ Aid Society Tabitha from 1939.  

I don’t know the names of everyone in the photograph. I don’t know their individual stories. But I do know something about them.  

They lived during the Great Depression. They gathered at our church at a time when the future of the world seemed increasingly uncertain. Within a few years, many of the women pictured would watch their husbands, sons, and cousins leave for war.  

As I looked at that picture, I found myself wondering what they thought the future would hold. What concerns did they bring to worship each Sunday? What prayers did they offer? What decisions dis they face?  

And then it occurred to me:  

They probably weren’t thinking about us at all.  

They were simply trying to be faithful in their own generation.  

They didn’t know that nearly a century later their photograph would still hand in this building. They didn’t know what ministries would come and go and who would be leading those ministries. They didn’t know which pastors would serve here. They had no idea how things like the internet and artificial intelligence would shape the community they’d come to call home.  

What they knew was that God had been faithful to them. And because they trusted that faithfulness, they did their part. They worshiped. They served. They gave. They prayed. They carried the faith for a season and passed it on.  

That, I think is exactly what the psalmist means when he says, “I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.” The woman in that photograph were one generation in a much longer story. Now it is our turn. Not to know everything about the future. Not to solve every problem. But to be faithful to the generation God has entrusted to us.  

The women in that 1939 photograph did not know what the future would hold.  

They did not know that a world war was coming. They did not know what changes this congregation would experience over the next eight decades. They did not know which ministries would flourish, which ministries would end, or what challenges future generations would face.  

What they knew was that God had been faithful.  

And because they trusted God’s faithfulness, they did what God had called them to do in their own time and place.  

And now it is our turn.  

I think that is the invitation of Psalm 89. It’s an invitation for us to carry the faith for a season and pass it on.  

The invitation is not to predict the future. Not to cling desperately to the past.  

But to remember that we belong to a story that is much larger than ourselves.  

To remember that the same God who sustained those women in 1939 is the God who sustains us today.  

To remember that the same God who guided this congregation through seasons of growth and seasons of struggle is the God who walks with us now.  

The same God who was faithful to previous generations will be faithful to the generations yet to come.  

Our calling is not to carry the whole future on our shoulders.  

Our calling is simply to be faithful to the generation God has given us.  

To worship. 

To serve. 

To pray.  

To love.  

To trust.  

And to add our voices to the song the psalmist began so long ago:  

I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. 

Someday, long after we are gone, another generation will walk past those display cases. They will see photographs of people they never knew and ministries they never experienced. And just as we look back on those women in the Ladies’ Aid Society Tabitha, they may look back on us.  

May future generations look back on us as we look back on those women in that photograph- not because we had all the answers, but because we trusted the God who did. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  

Amen.