LAMENT: "a time to weep... to mourn... to rend... to speak..."

The serious study of Hebrew Prophets is a dangerous business but the church where I worship is willing to grapple with serious things and to hear judgment and instruction. We have spent the last several weeks with the Prophet Jeremiah whose words all too often seem all too pertinent for our time. 

Today I was asked to lead our congregation in a prayer of lament.

A biblical lament [there are many examples in the Psalms] is comprised of 5 parts:

1. The cry. A suffering people cry out to their God, uncertain that there is a God to answer.
2. The complaint. The suffering is described and the people demand that God see their pain.
3. The confession. The "real problem" is acknowledged and the source of suffering becomes clear to the people.
4. The profession. The people turn back to God in trust and dare to hope that God hears, God sees, God restores.
5. The shout of praise. The people, still suffering but now hopeful, praise the God whose love is the one eternal thing in a challenging world. 

A Psalm of Lament by K Cummings Pipes 20 October 2019

Based on Lamentations and The Beatitudes

[I begin with the cry from the 130th Psalm. Phrases in quotations are from Lamentations with the exception of the one marked with * which is from Walter Brueggemann's collection of prayers, "Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth," Fortress Press, 2003.]

“Out of the depths, we cry” to you,

O Lord, Our God.

We are “lost and wandering”

and no longer know The Way.

We “weep through the night

and know no rest.”

We are “deceived” and “betrayed”

and all that was sweet is now bitter.

“Out of the depths, we cry” to you,

O Lord, Our God.

“See, O Lord!”

We have been “caught in the net and stumbled.

We have rebelled against you.

Our sins are a yoke around our necks;

we are enslaved in darkness.”

We take your blessing for granted

in our greed for more and in our refusal to share.

We take your mercy for granted

while refusing to be merciful

       to orphans and strangers and exiles

who plead for help.

We claim to be your children

while making war, not peace.

We live in a “seduced world…  so that we rarely see 

      the truth of these matters.”*

But this morning, in this moment,

we see the truth

and we come to you as we are

in all our faithless faith

and dare to hope for rescue.

“For you, O LORD, are enthroned forever.”

“Bring us back to you.”

"Forgive us."

“Renew us."

"Revive us.”

“The LORD’s kindness has not ended.

The LORD’s mercies are not exhausted.

Your steadfast love is new every morning.

Great is Your faithfulness!”

O Lord, Our God, hear our cry. 

Amen.

Reading: C. S. Lewis on prayer

Reflections on the dialog...

SEASONS, my women reading theology group, selected Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer by C. S. Lewis. I had the book on my shelf, highlighted from two previous readings and put off rereading until this week.  I was in for a bit of a shock. Lewis and his imaginary friend Malcolm--an undergraduate with C.S. Lewis, exchanging “interminable letters on the Republic and classical metres, and what was then the “new” psychology!” and now continuing their correspondence on the subject of prayer--are far better read than I. Lewis drops  a lot of names and builds his sentences of countless literary references. Many of the people he mentions are intellectuals, philosophers, believers who wrestle with God or fight against “religion” as idolatry. While I recognized most of the names, I was not as familiar with their thought as I needed to be to fully comprehend Lewis's dialog.

I think Lewis intended this book not only as a treatise on prayer but also as a dialogue with his contemporary theologians on the issues of the day.
In particular Letters to Malcolm addresses Alec Vidler’s Soundings and Bishop of Woolwich John Robinson’s Honest to God.

I began making notes in the margin of my book. Then I decided to create a cheat sheet to share with SEASONS. I worked through the first six chapters. Then I found that someone else had already done so. Wasted effort? No! I have decided that I might want to read Pascal. I discovered a woman novelist, Rose Macauley, to see if I want to read; since she's 20th Century it may be a long well before she climbs to the top of the book stack. Simone Wiel looks very interesting.

This link is to a chapter-by-chapter listing of notes by Arend Smildes which I think the reader will find helpful.

http://www.lewisiana.nl/malcolmquotes/index.htm

The notes I made before I decided not to reinvent the wheel follow:

 

Chapter 1 (sets the scene. This is a “Socratic dialogue”)

 p.3        Republic            by Plato           429 – 347 B.C.           Greek

student of Socrates; founder of the Academy of Athens; the founding philosopher of Western thought.                Quotes:
“Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?”
“The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.”
“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”
“Nothing beautiful without struggle.”

Chapter 2

 p. 9       Imitation (of Christ)    by Thomas a Kempis 1418 – 1427   German Catholic

priest, monk, hand wrote 2 copies of the Bible (10 volumes)   Quotes:
“If God were our one and only desire we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
“A book has but one voice, but it does not instruct everyone alike.”
“As long as you live, you will be subject to change, whether you will it or not - now glad, now sorrowful; now pleased, now displeased; now devout, now undevout; now vigorous, now slothful; now gloomy, now merry. But a wise man who is well taught in spiritual labor stands unshaken in all such things, and heeds little what he feels, or from what side the wind of instability blows.”
“Jesus has now many lovers of the heavenly kingdom but few bearers of His cross.”
“Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.”
“The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.”

 p. 10     Letters               Rose Macauley 1881 – 1958       English         Secularist & Anglican

her letters were published in 3 volumes in 1958. Her 26 novels (Towers of Trebizond 1956 semi-autobiographical) often have religious themes; Christianity is treated satirically in early works. An ardent secularist, she had a long (1918-1941) secret affair with Irish novelist Gerald O’Donavan. She returned to the Anglican communion in 1953.  Quotes:
“It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.”
“At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.”
“Life, for all its agonies...is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing...and whatever is to come after it -- we shall not have this life again.”
“It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead.”
 

p. 11      Blaise Pascal 1628 -1662         French               Augustinian Catholic (Jansenism)

“On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..." and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He carried this note sewn into his coat. A servant discovered it only by chance after his death. After this experience he began writing the Lettres Provinciales and the Pensees.  Quotes from Pensees:

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
“There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadow for those who don't.”
“The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.”
“Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

Chapter 3

p. 14     “Manichchaeian” used figuratively as a synonym for “dualist” and suggests, somewhat disparagingly, that this world view simplistically reduces the world to a struggle between Good and Evil. Originally a major Gnostic religion founded by Iranian/Persian Mani, 216 – 276 A.D., Lewis refers not to the original but to the Histoire Critique de Manichee by Isaac de Beausobre, 1659 – 1738.        French Protestant explores the history of heresy and orthodoxy, concludes “God… eternally active and creative”

p. 15     John A.T. Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich      1919 – 1983              English Anglican Liberal author of Honest to God (1963), Robinson attempted to reconcile the disparate theologies of Tillich and Bonhoeffer. For more information see this article by N. T. Wright:  http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Doubts_About_Doubt.htm

Quotes:
"For it is in making himself nothing, in his utter self-surrender to others in love, that [Jesus] discloses and lays bare the Ground of man's being as Love".
"For assertions about God are in the last analysis assertions about Love".
“…the sacrament which forms the heart of Christian worship is… the assertion of ‘the “beyond” in the midst of our life’, the holy in the common. The Holy Communion is the point at which the common, the communal, becomes the carrier of the unconditional, as the Christ makes himself known in the breaking and sharing of bread.”

Chapter 4

p. 21     Martin Buber 1878 – 1965          Austrian Isarali Jew        Zionist author of               Ich und Du (I and Thou) “dialogical community… dialogical relationships”        Quotes:

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”
“Solitude is the place of purification.”
“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”

Chapter 5

p. 28     Juvenal 127 A.D              Roman poet “bread and circuses”

              “enormous prayers which heaven in vengeance grants”

 Chapter 6

 

p. 29     Alexander Vidler 1899 – 1991    English   Anglican priest, publisher, “new” theology              editor of Theology to which C.S. Lewis contributed, scholor of F.D. Marice

edited Soundings, collection of essays on Christian theology and the sciences. Quote:
"We are all sure that there is a way ahead, else we should not have taken up our pens. We have been less disconcerted by our differences than surprised by our concurrencies."

 F. D. Maurice 1805 – 1872             English   Christian socialist,

Proponet of women’s education, Unitarian family, ordained Anglican, deprived of Cambridge professorships for “unsound theology”  Quotes:
"The Bible," we are told sometimes, "gives us such a beautiful picture of what we should be." Nonsense! It gives us no picture at all. It reveals to us a fact: it tells us what we really are; it says, This is the form in which God created you, to which He has restored you; this is the work which the Eternal Son, the God of Truth and Love, is continually carrying on within you.
“The desire for unity has haunted me all my life through; I have never been able to substitute any desire for that, or to accept any of the different schemes for satisfaction of that men have desired.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 – 1945             German             Lutheran              anti-Nazi
             Christianity in a secular world.               Quotes:
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
“A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.”
“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”
“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.....We must not.....assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”

 p. 30    John Newman 1801 – 1890           English    Anglican convert to Catholicism, Cardinal,  leader of the Oxford Movement... Quotes:

”We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

 Simone Wiel 1909 – 1943 French               agnostic Jew, philosopher  Scholar of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Greek & Egyptian mystery religions. Sometimes described as a "Christian mystic, she baptized late in her life into the Roman Catholic communion by Thomas Merton.      Quotes:

 “All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”
“True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.”
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
“It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. ”

 I collected most of the quotes by googling an author's name and selected the goodreads quotation link that popped up. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes

 

And another resource for reading C. S. Lewis:

http://www.cslewis.org/resources/studyguides/Study%20Guide%20-%20Letters%20to%20Malcolm.pdf

SEASONS: 2 books on biblical womanhood in Hebrew scripture

I belong to a book club of sorts. SEASONS is a group of women meeting most months to discuss a book over a continental breakfast. We usually gather at Southwest Central Church of Christ which is the church that many of us attend. We read theology and fiction. Our summer selections have been two books that we grouped together as dealing with Hebrew scripture and rituals in every day:

Rachel Held Evans: A Year of Biblical Womanhood
Thomas Nelson, 2012. Available as a Kindle book.
 SEASONS also read Evans's Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. Evans is a clever, well-read, witty author. She has a particular interest in confronting injustice and, particularly, the injustices of sexism. She is both firm and funny but she's sometimes a bit "snarky." One minute I want to throw her book across the room but the next I'm highlighting a perfectly turned phrase:  "...be careful of challenging another woman's choices, for you never know when she may be sitting at the feet of God." p. 37 "...for all its glory and grandeur, the Bible contains a darkness... sometimes taking the Bible seriously means confronting the parts we don't like or understand..." p. 62 , 66 "The divine resides in all of us, but it is our choice to magnify it or diminish it, to ignore it, or to surrender to its lead." p. 73 "...most of the Bible's instructions regarding modesty find their context in warnings about materialism, not sexuality..." p. 128 "Women should not have to pry equality from the grip of Christian men. It should be surrendered willingly, with the humility and love of Jesus, or else we miss the once radical teaching that slaves and masters, parents and children, husbands and wives, rich and poor, healthy and sick, should 'submit to one another' Ephesians 5:21" p. 219 "We all go to the text looking for something, and we all have a tendency to find it. So the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we reading with the prejudice of love or are we reading with the prejudices of judgment and power, self-interest and greed?" p. 296

Rachel Held Evans is not afraid to ask the most controversial questions and I often read her blog. The most current one is on Responding to Homophobia in the Christian Community.

I missed the SEASONS in both June and July so I'm eager for a time to visit with my friends and to share our gleanings from
Lauren F. Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline. I very much enjoyed reading this book. Winner beautifully expresses many things that I think. She has an interesting history as a Jewish woman who converted to Christianity in her late twenties. Two of her books Girl Meets God and Faith Interrupted tell part of her story. Her perspective melds well with my own since I am a lover of Hebrew scripture. I am a seeker of "rhythms and routines" that draw "the sacred down into the everyday."."Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity....Your faith might come and go, but your practice ought no to waver.... the repeating of the practice is the best way to ensure that a doubter's faith returns." Introduction. Chapter 5 p. 53 of her book is titled "tefillah prayer" and is the best short lesson on prayer that I have ever read which is saying a lot since my personal collection devotes three linear feet of shelf space to the subject. "Jewish prayer is essentially book prayer, liturgical prayer. Jews say the same set prayers, at the same fixed hours, over and over, every day. There is, to be sure, room for spontaneous prayer... but those spontaneous prayers are to liturgy what grace notes are to the musical score: They decorate, but never drown out, the central theme."   "words that praise God even on the mornings when I wonder if God exists at all."  Winner's sections on Sabbath, on grief, and on hospitality are instructive and life-giving. "Judaism connects physical acts to spiritual practice without somehow suggesting that the spirit is superior to the body."  p. 69 I plan to get to know this author much better. http://laurenwinner.net/

We're probably going to select our next books and I'll be seconding the nomination for a novel:
John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. 

PSL: Prayer as a Second Language

On Thursday I was honored to teach the final class of the year for the Ladies Bible Class at my church. During this fall semester, my dear friend Andrea has been leading the class in a study entitled "Praying to God in God's Own Words." She explored The Lord's Prayer and several other New Testament prayers. Early last summer she asked me if I would be willing to teach the concluding lesson on praying the Psalms.

As it has every Thursday, the class began with the recitation of the Lord's Prayer followed by the old Sunday School standard "Whisper a prayer... to keep your heart in tune."

For the lesson I presented, I am deeply indebted to a wonderful book examining Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians:

Eugene H. Peterson: Practice Resurrection. A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010.

"Why are people so ready to appoint a representative to do their praying for them? Why is there so much more talk about prayer than actual praying? Why are so many more doubts expressed and questions raised about this form of language than any other?

…observe the way language is used when we are not on our knees…. Listen… the primary use of language is impersonal… to name things, describe actions, provide information, command specific behaviors, tell the truth, tell lies, curse, bless. Language is incredibly and endlessly versatile. But in our heavily technologized and consumerized world, most of the words said and heard in most ordinary days have little or no relational or personal depth to them. They deal with a world of things and activities, machines and ideas....

Language objectifies both the world before us and the people around us…. "

The poet William Wordsworth in his 1806 poem  laments:
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
...
For this, for everything, we are out of tune..."

Wordsworth's use of the phrase "out of tune" as did the little song with which we began the class suggests that the reason one should "whisper a prayer" is to "keep your heart in tune." 
One of the illustrations I often use when teaching the Psalms is a pair of tuning forks, each tuned to the same note but an octave apart. When one fork is struck and begins to vibrate and the second is brought near to the first, the second will also begin to vibrate. They are "in tune" and they resonate together. So it is when one reads a Psalm and finds in the words an echo, a perfect expression, of one's own joy or pain.

Indeed, in the world around us, in our everyday encounters, most of our language is used... “getting and spending.” Too often, we bring this use of language into our prayers.

Quoting Peterson again:
"But language at its core and its best reveals. Using words, I can speak myself into relationship with another."
{I inserted examples of how our speaking had created relationships with people in the class.}

Prayer works in the same way. When we learn the language of prayer, it can speak us into a relationship with God.

"...prayer is personal language or it is nothing. God is personal, emphatically personal… When we use impersonal language in this most personal of all relations, the language doesn’t work… when we listen in Scripture and in silence to what the personal God has to say to us in our unique person hood, anticipating information or answers and not hearing anything remotely like that, we don’t know what to make of it. We may walk away saying or thinking, “God doesn’t speak to me… He never listens to me.”

The practice of prayer, if it is going to amount to anything more than wish lists and complaints, requires a recovery of personal, relational, revelational language in both our listening and our speaking."

We are blessed to have Caleb McDaniel teaching the Open Door Class and I greatly appreciate the historical perspective he brings to our class and to my study. Currently we are looking at the creeds of Christendom, beginning with some creeds or creed-like sections of the New Testament and then looking at other very early creeds, The Apostles' Creed, The Nicene Creed in its several revisions, and several others in coming weeks. Last Sunday, he noted that looking at changes from creed to creed gives us glimpses of what was happening in the culture of that time but that looking at those things which are “continuous and consistent” throughout the centuries can help us see what is really the core of  Christian belief.

When the church and its members begin to learn prayer as a second language what is "continuous and consistent" is the use of the Psalms. For example, lectionaries and the Daily Office include daily Psalms. Almost all published editions of the New Testament (such as those distributed by the Gideons) include the Psalms. Almost all books of daily devotions will reference the Psalms. Some Christians (not I!) may dismiss the stories and prophecies of the Old Testament as fulfilled and irrelevant to the practice of Christianity but, through the millennia, the "classic text book for recovering the personal language of prayer is the Psalms. A thorough immersion in the Psalms is the primary way that Christians acquire fluency in the personal, intimate, honest, earthy, language of prayer and take our place in the great company of our praying ancestors."
Those praying ancestors are part of  that “great cloud of witnesses" about which Caleb preached form the pulpit last Sunday and when we pray the same words of scripture which they prayed we are with them and they are with us.

Quoting Peterson:
"For while prayer is always personal, it is never individual. At prayer we are part of a great congregation whether we see them or not. Praying the Psalms gets us used to being in a praying congregation… We are never less alone than when we pray, even when there is no one else in the room. We are praying for others who don’t know we are praying for them. Others are praying for us although we don’t know it…. When we pray we are not self-enclosed. Praying the Psalms keeps us in a school of prayer that maintains wakefulness and an open ear, alertness and an articulate tongue, both to the word of God and to the voices of praise and pain of God’s people."
We see that in the New Testament prayers that Andrea has led us through this Fall. Today I want to recall the lesson she taught a couple of weeks ago on the Apostle Paul’s great prayer from his letter to the Ephesians.

Ephesians 1:16 – 19; 3:14 – 21
I make mention of you in my prayers: 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding[a] being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power .

14 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,[a] 15 from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen

Note that Paul’s prayer begins with God's great work of salvation, the riches of his glory, which leads to exultant act of worship. Peterson reminds us that "…prayers of intercession flow out of the plenitude of God. The plenitude of God, not the penury of the human condition…"

Too often in our prayers we bring the language of our need, of human poverty, into our prayers, failing to see the "riches of his glory" which are abundantly more that our need. The Psalms encourage lament, the full recognition of human need and pain but they also encourage thanksgiving and trust, the "steadfast love of the Lord" which never ceases.

In chapter four of Ephesians Paul quotes the 68th Psalm. Peterson argues that the 68th Psalm offers "a structure that gives literary and theological shape to what he writes: first a thorough meditative immersion in the action and word of God (chapters 1-3), which then takes form in a worship-generated life of believing obedience (chapters 4-6)."

The first 23 verses of the Psalm present a documentary of God in saving action. At midpoint the Psalm shifts to a comprehensive act of worship in the sanctuary. Peterson:

"All that God is and does—riding the clouds, transforming the wilderness, commanding the prophetic proclamation of good news, taking charge once and for all by ascending the “high mount”—is brought together in a worshiping procession of singers and musicians into the sanctuary, bringing gifts, acclaiming blessings.

Sanctuary is a set-apart places consecrated for worship, paying reverent attention to who God reveals himself to be and how he reveals himself in our history…. Psalm 68 worship is a listening attentiveness to God in word and action, which develops into glad participation in that word and action.”

Sanctuary is what we create for ourselves, as individuals and as a community, when we pray.

Look more closely at Paul's quotation in Ephesians 4 of the 68th Psalm:
Ephesians 4: 7-8 reads:
"7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore He says:
“When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.”

Psalm 68:18 reads:
"You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive; You have received gifts among men,
Even from the rebellious, That the LORD God might dwell there."

Note that Paul changes the quote from the triumphant King who receives gifts to the Messiah who gives gifts. It is not because Saul, the rabbinic student of the great Gamaliel, does not know the scripture. Paul, the Apostle, changes it because Jesus does indeed change everything. Such a simple fact which I never noticed until I began to prepare this lessons: Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed of God gives us gifts from "the riches of God's glory" and that changes, or perhaps it is better to say fulfills, the scripture in a way that is surprising.

So here in the 68th Psalm, as in so many others, we find a model not only for the language of prayer but also for the day-to-day practice of Christian life.

The class then moved from my talking about prayer to the practice of prayer. When one learns a second  language, one must go to the language lab; one must begin to speak the language.

Deep breath and exhale to prepare for prayer.
The class then sang a few songs and read selections from the Psalm. We attempted to read it not as text to be studied but as prayer—personal, relational, communal prayer. We each read aloud but made no attempt to read in unison. We wanted to pray as individuals but to be aware of the "murmur" of the "cloud of witnesses" around us.
I suggested that we pray the 68th Psalm as intercession for the persecuted church.

Song #794 Unto Thee, O Lord

Song 55: I will bless Thee, O Lord

Psalm 68:1-10
68 Let God arise,
Let His enemies be scattered;
Let those also who hate Him flee before Him.
2 As smoke is driven away,
So drive them away;
As wax melts before the fire,
So let the wicked perish at the presence of God.
3 But let the righteous be glad;
Let them rejoice before God;
Yes, let them rejoice exceedingly.
4 Sing to God, sing praises to His name;
Extol Him who rides on the clouds,
By His name YAH,
And rejoice before Him.
5 A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows,
Is God in His holy habitation.
6 God sets the solitary in families;
He brings out those who are bound into prosperity;
But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.
7 O God, when You went out before Your people,
When You marched through the wilderness, Selah
8 The earth shook;
The heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God;
Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
9 You, O God, sent a plentiful rain,
Whereby You confirmed Your inheritance,
When it was weary.
10 Your congregation dwelt in it;
You, O God, provided from Your goodness for the poor.

Psalm 68:17-2
17 The chariots of God are twenty thousand,
Even thousands of thousands;
The Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the Holy Place.
18 You have ascended on high,
You have led captivity captive;
You have received gifts among men,
Even from the rebellious,
That the LORD God might dwell there.
19 Blessed be the Lord,
Who daily loads us with benefits,
The God of our salvation! Selah
20 Our God is the God of salvation;
And to GOD the Lord belong escapes from death.

Song 193: Crown Him with many Crowns

Psalm 68:24-26
24 They have seen Your procession, O God,
The procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary.
25 The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after;
Among them were the maidens playing timbrels.
26 Bless God in the congregations,
The Lord, from the fountain of Israel.


Psalm 68:32-35
32 Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth;
Oh, sing praises to the Lord, Selah
33 To Him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which were of old!
Indeed, He sends out His voice, a mighty voice.
34 Ascribe strength to God;
His excellence is over Israel,
And His strength is in the clouds.
35 O God, You are more awesome than Your holy places.
The God of Israel is He who gives strength and power to His people.
Blessed be God!

Song 108: The Lord is in His Holy Temple

We kept a time of silence and concluded with a song:
"I love you, Lord,
And I lift up my voice,
To worship you… Oh, my soul, rejoice!
Take joy, my king, in what you hear:
May it be a sweet, sweet sound
In your ear."

Serendipity: Although we were reading/praying individually, the phrasing of the psalm seemed to move us increasingly toward unity. We found that we were reading in unison; we could in fact not read in unison. I had not anticipated this lesson on one of the functions of prayer. We pray to create unity. Praying the Psalms is not only the great school of prayer but a source of our unity with God, with our best selves, with one another, and with Christians in all places and in all times.

The hymns were from Songs of Faith and Praise.
The scripture readings were from NKJV.

Meditation: sweet gum buds

Hurricane Ike toppled the young sweet gum tree in our back yard. The moment the storm passed, we pulled it back to vertical and staked it in hope that new roots would form and that Spring would bring bare branches back to life. As winter days grew longer and warmer, we watched and hoped. Was there any life in those bare branches?

Several weeks ago buds began to swell and the vigil became one of eager expectation. Friday was the first day of Spring and I spent it tending my neglected garden. In the morning, the sweet gum’s buds were hard, tight, closed. Each hour’s warmth and light worked upon the buds, growing them fat and long and coloring their tips blood red. Shortly after noon, the first tiny leaf unfolded and unfurled, followed quickly by others. By Sunday morning the tree was covered with leaves growing large and more numerous by the moment. My tree is green and growing. Hallelujah!

On my knees in a garden, I realize that for a long winter I have been a bare branch; I have been hard and tight and closed. Suddenly I am in prayer, fervently wanting to be opened, unfolded, unfurled. In eager expectation I am tempted to rush toward renewed life, to shout “Hallelujah!” I am tempted to hurry Easter, but resurrection life, like a budding branch, cannot be rushed.
So I will spend a short season in waiting; I will take time to repent, to be rooted and grounded anew, to become slowly and fully aware of the warmth and light that Christ brings to the world. I will remember the shouts of praise that turned in a week to betrayal and a cross. I will count the cost of the love that rolled the stone from the tomb.

Oh, Lord, come Easter in me and once more I will be green and growing.