The Verse We All Like to Quote (and Ignore)

Psalm 146:8 isn’t just about “the stranger.” 

It’s about all the hard parts.

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The Lord loves the righteous; the Lord cares for the stranger; He sustains the orphan and the widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked.”

— From Psalm 146

It’s one of the great “bumper sticker” verses of Scripture.
We all have our favorite parts of it.
We all skip the rest.

In the U.S. today, this verse is usually invoked to shame Christians on immigration policy. “See? The Bible says take care of strangers!” And indeed, it does. Christians really do believe this. We’re commanded to care for strangers — even the undocumented, even the overlooked, even the people who feel alien in our midst.

But notice what the psalmist actually wrote. He didn’t say, “Retweet policies about strangers.” He said, “The Lord cares for the stranger.” It’s personal. Human-to-human. Not performed from behind a keyboard. Not virtue-signaling at a distance.

Do you greet the stranger on your own street? Do you help the single mom in your own family? Do you even notice the widow across the aisle at church?

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The verse goes on: the orphan and the widow.
In our own neighborhoods, at our own tables, these people exist. We know their names. We’re often related to them. Yet we pour our outrage into national hashtags while leaving them unaided.

And the first line? “The Lord loves the righteous.” Righteous as in morally straight, ethically clean, financially honest, sexually self-controlled, sacrificial toward others. This verse is not just about immigration. It’s about character.

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The psalm ends its thought with a warning: “but frustrates the way of the wicked.”

We can’t cherry-pick one phrase of a verse and treat it as a cudgel against the people we already dislike — while pretending the rest of the verse isn’t there. And if you’re going to cherry-pick, at least practice the part you’ve picked. Better yet, live it so deeply that you’d never dream of calling attention to how good you are at it.

Psalm 146:8 doesn’t give us a slogan.
It gives us a mirror.

📖 Reflectionary is still in transition.

• Through August 31, posts appeared here on Blogger.

• Starting September, Reflectionary: The Word and the Real World will also appear on Substack, alongside the deeper narrative project 45 Winters.

• We’re working out a few profile and account kinks — but soon the two will walk side by side.

Thank you for reading — and for living the hard parts of Scripture, not just the easy ones.