Tag: psalms of praise

What is Your View of God? (Psalm 33:1-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
God’s Love… by Hope G. Smith

Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous.
    Praise befits the upright.
Praise the Lord with the lyre;
    make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.
Sing to him a new song;
    play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

For the word of the Lord is upright,
    and all his work is done in faithfulness.
He loves righteousness and justice;
    the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made
    and all their host by the breath of his mouth.
He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle;
    he put the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord;
    let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him,
for he spoke, and it came to be;
    he commanded, and it stood firm.

The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
    he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
    the thoughts of his heart to all generations.
Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord,
    the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. (New Revised Standard Version)

One of the reasons I adore the biblical psalms is that they present a majestic God who is full of goodness and steadfast love. The Lord’s very character is disposed toward justice and righteousness. Every word of God comes from this place of control and compassionate care.

I agree with the psalmist’s view of God because it resonates with my own experience. I have found that the God of the Psalms is high above all creation as the sovereign ruler, as well as intimately close as a friend.

The words, then, which proceed from the mouth of God are always just, right, good, fair, and loving. If God’s basic character is love, then everything God says and does comes from love. And that is precisely why I am completely devoted to this Lord.

Believers can sing a new song and revel in the Lord’s presence because they discern that everything comes down to God. That is, the way we view God is the way we will live our lives. 

For example, if we tend to see God as a stern Being whose main activity is to continually rebuke and punish people for their sin, then we will live with a constant sense of guilt and anxiety for fear of angering such a God. We will invariably live a performance-based life trying to pull ourselves up by our spiritual bootstraps in order to please or placate such a God who is always looking over our shoulder to make sure that we do not mess up.

That’s a miserable life, indeed! This is why many people internally say to themselves, “To hell with it!” and live in outright rebellion against a God who seems not to care a wit about their happiness. 

The cruelties of this world seem only to be God mocking their abysmal failure at being decent people. It would be like telling my grandson with epilepsy to stop having seizures, as if my love for him is dependent on him being seizure-free. Most people would consider it abusive for a parent or grandparent to yell at a kid for having seizures. With that kind of view of God, I wouldn’t want to know him either. And if that’s the sort of god you’re buying into, you need a new god.

But, on the other hand, if we understand God as a loving parent who is pained by the damage guilt and shame has done to the souls of people, then we are open to seeing the grace of God coming to set broken spirits right again.

With Christianity, the death of Christ is the ultimate act of love in taking care of the sin issue once for all. God in Christ did for us what we could do for ourselves; he gave his life so that we could live as we were intended to live: enjoying God and God’s creation forever.

In this view of God, the task of spiritual formation is one of constantly replacing destructive understandings of God with the kind of thoughts of God that filled the mind of Jesus himself. 

And the only good way of doing that is through the basic spiritual disciplines of Scripture reading and prayer, hearing the words of God. In order to listen well, we engage in practices of silence and solitude, as well as praise and celebration, that helps us connect with God’s Word. 

The grand redemptive story of the Bible is that the steadfast love of God has found its apex and fulfillment in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus. Therefore, all of Holy Scripture is to be viewed through these lenses of the grace of God in Christ. It is a very different picture than the one of an indifferent God.

Seeing God from the perspective of grace brings a joyous way to live because it views God as generous and hospitable. From such an angle, the logical and appropriate response is one of gratitude. 

All false gospels have at their core a kind of you-are-bad-try-harder approach. Preachers of such an ilk only rail against people as being scum buckets of sin and offer no real hope of transformation in Christ. It promotes a grace-less religion, and it is nothing less than biblical malpractice.

I take heart that if we have trouble seeing God as we ought, or experience difficulty viewing life as it is meant to truly be lived, we can ask God to give us wisdom. And the promise connected to that encouragement to pray is that God will give generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to them. (James 1:5)

In the psalmist’s view of God, prayer is not a chore but a delight; service is not drudgery but a willing response; reading Scripture is not a mandatory exercise but a wonderful practice of knowing God better; and praise organically erupts from the depths of our being, because we have spiritual eyes to see that everywhere we look, the whole earth is filled with the steadfast love of God.

Bless us with Love, O Merciful God;
That we may Love as you Love!
That we may show patience, tolerance,
Kindness, caring and love to all!
Give me knowledge; O giver of Knowledge,
That I may be one with my Creator and all creation!
O Compassionate One, grant compassion to us;
That we may help all people in need!
Bless us with your Love, O Lord.
Bless us with your Love. Amen.

Our Place in the World (Psalm 8)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory
    in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
    you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
    to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth! (New International Version)

I adore the psalms. Many years ago, it was the biblical psalter which helped me come to faith. This little psalm for today is illustrative of why I was moved toward embracing a life with God. Psalm 8 grounds us by dealing with the ultimate questions of human existence:

  • Who am I?
  • Why do I exist?
  • What is the purpose of life?

The answers to those questions are supremely important because people throughout history, and now across the world, are asking what meaning their lives really have.

For example, depression is pervasive throughout the world, as well as the church. It’s a huge issue. Peeling back the layers of a person’s life, many have a deep sense of not truly belonging, and of being profoundly misunderstood by others. Many depressed persons are very aware of their own mortality and have a disconnected sense of their personal role in the world.

Put another way, some folks have lost their original purpose of being a person, that they belong to the human family in a way that makes a significant contribution to the world.

Living on such a big planet causes some people to feel small and wonder how they fit in. With such a large universe, which may at times seem cold and capricious, we may ask, along with psalmist, “What is humanity that you are mindful of them?”

That question forms the center of the psalm. Hebrew poetry is typically set up to have the front and the end of the poem point to the middle where the chief focus is found. So then, the psalmist purposely wrote this psalm so we would consider this great question of what God thinks of humanity within the scope of this immense universe.

And it is a staggeringly huge universe! To put it in perspective, if our galaxy, the Milky Way, were the size of the entire continent of North America, our solar system would fit in a coffee cup.

Even now, two Voyager spacecraft are hurtling toward the edge of the solar system at a rate of 100,000 miles per hour. For decades they have been speeding away from Earth, having now traveled billions of miles. When engineers beam a command to the spacecraft at the speed of light, it takes over half a day to arrive.

Yet this vast neighborhood of our sun—in truth, the size of a coffee cup—fits along with several hundred billion other stars and their planets in the Milky Way, one of perhaps 100 billion such galaxies in the universe. To send a light-speed message to the edge of that universe would take 15 billion years.

Out of the billions of galaxies in the universe, what is the planet Earth that God should care about it? 

Even on our planet there are billions of creatures. Yet, of all those bugs, animals, fish, and birds, God has a special relationship with us, humanity, and cares for us deeply. We know that God cares for us, according to this psalm, because he has entrusted us with the responsibility to care for creation.

We are the only creatures who have the charge to steward all that God has created. As people created in the image of God, we have a job that is befitting of a king. We are God’s vice-regents, in charge of tending and caring for all creation. This incredible job is both a duty and a delight.

God has us playing a crucial role in governing and caring for the world he created. Like a parent or grandparent patiently working with a child to teach them responsibility for all that is around them, God teaches us, and has entrusted to us, this large expansive world we live in. Literally everything in all creation is under our stewardship.

People alone have the self-awareness and perspective of the world that is needed to govern the world. Therefore, we can only find our true purpose and belonging in the stewardship of creation. Caregiving is at the heart of being a person.

The only glitch to all this, and why so many lose their way, is that the world is still living under a curse due to the original fall of humanity.

When we allow other dominions to supersede God’s dominion, then we have issues. Whenever the power of money or the significance of a position, job title, or the ability to do certain tasks is our basic identity and place of belonging, then we will likely succumb to anxiety. That’s because other dominions cannot help us find our true God-given majesty as people created in God’s image.

Living a way other than being a proper steward of the world is beneath us because we have inherent dignity as God’s vice-regents over creation.

Mother Teresa once said that there is no such thing as a small thing – only small things which are done with big love. Her sentiment perfectly captures the vision of the psalmist – that all people are crowned with glory and honor and rule with God to do all the small things of life with a love that comes from our Creator.

We continually have possibilities of engaging in good stewardship of all that God has given us. We have the chance to be attentive to all the little things of life, whether gardening, building a bird house, working with diligence and care at our jobs, or keeping our community clean and its citizens healthy and happy – it’s all important. It brings meaning to our existence as human beings.

People, like all creation, are meant for growth. Putting effort into developing our skills and honing our craft, whatever that may be, is what helps us tap into our God-given purpose for being in this big world.

So, may we continually improve what we do, no matter what it is, so that it befits us as God’s people crowned with honor. May we realize joy and contentment – knowing the majesty we share with God in his wondrous world. 

Almighty God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, words are not enough to express your awesome majesty. Our highest expressions of theology are but baby talk next to you.

Grant us awareness through your Spirit that you are here with us. May this awareness lead us to approach life carefully. The words we speak, the songs we sing, the thoughts we think, the joy and sadness we feel – may it all be pleasing to you, O Lord.

For, despite the inadequacy of our words and actions, our life and worship are addressed to you alone. May you make that life complete, whole, and full to overflowing through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever.  Amen.

Let Me Tell You What God Has Done For Me (Psalm 66:8-20)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Praise our God, all peoples,
    let the sound of his praise be heard;
he has preserved our lives
    and kept our feet from slipping.
For you, God, tested us;
    you refined us like silver.
You brought us into prison
    and laid burdens on our backs.
You let people ride over our heads;
    we went through fire and water,
    but you brought us to a place of abundance.

I will come to your temple with burnt offerings
    and fulfill my vows to you—
vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke
    when I was in trouble.
I will sacrifice fat animals to you
    and an offering of rams;
    I will offer bulls and goats.

Come and hear, all you who fear God;
    let me tell you what he has done for me.
I cried out to him with my mouth;
    his praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished sin in my heart,
    the Lord would not have listened;
but God has surely listened
    and has heard my prayer.
Praise be to God,
    who has not rejected my prayer
    or withheld his love from me! (New International Version)

“God made humans because God loves stories.”

Elie Wiesel

The Church’s Prayer Book

Those of us who utilize the Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings are familiar with having a psalm each day. In addition, the same psalm is repeated three consecutive days, following the pattern of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday readings preparing for Sunday – and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday readings reflecting on Sunday. The Psalter has such a prominent place in the readings because it is viewed as the Church’s Prayer Book.

Within the book of Psalms, we have the full range of human experience and emotion. Much like athletes in weight training, putting in their reps (repetitions), so the Christian is to use the weighty Psalms with repeated use for spiritual growth and development. Prayer and praise, lament and celebration, are necessary equipment for the strengthening of faith and a healthy Christian life.

Psalms of Praise and Thanksgiving

Today’s psalm is a song of thanksgiving for the community of worshipers approaching the temple and offering their sacrifices to God. Together, as the people of God, they proclaim what God has done for them. Through hardship and difficulty, they have realized abundance and joy. Personal witness and testimony are given to the congregation for answered prayer so that all may rejoice together in God’s steadfast and unfailing love.

Expressing celebration is important. Without it, our spirits are famished and find it difficult to be patient and persevere. With celebration, our spiritual muscles flex with joy and are in shape for the trials and tribulations which lie ahead. Corporate affirmation and personal appreciation are meant to work together in a grand profession of faith in God’s good guidance and help.

“Come and listen and I will tell you what God did for me,” benefits both the individual and the group. If all we ever hear and experience is hardship, our faith muscle will be overused and give out. We need stories to celebrate. We need to hear testimonies of God’s enduring love.

So, what has God done for you? What celebrations do we have today? Are you willing to share your story?

Ritual Celebration

Celebrations are necessary because they highlight the things most important to us. And it is okay to make them regular rituals – which is why I care about attending to the Christian Year with it’s centrality of Jesus and the movements of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter(tide), Ascension, Pentecost, and “Ordinary” Time.

Ritual celebration is, of course, not unique to Christianity. Rituals are part of being human. At it’s heart, ritual is a form of celebration, of remembering to observe significant events, special seasons, and daily routines. Each ritual observance is a re-telling of meaningful stories for an individual, family, or group of people.

Observing ritual celebrations:

  • Re-enforces our values.
  • Gives us a sense of belonging.
  • Marks time for us in meaningful ways.
  • Forms daily habits in us.
  • Reminds of us of who we are and what our purpose in this world is.
  • Helps us express our emotions in a healthy way.
  • Adds new stories to our lives.
  • Connects us to our spiritual ancestors and bonds us to one another.
  • Builds close relationships and trust.
  • Heals us from traumatic events.

Not observing ritual celebrations:

  • Causes a lack of identity and purpose.
  • Creates loneliness and confusion.
  • Hollows out our lives and sucks our souls of joy.

Sharing stories, and paying attention to rituals, are a primary connection between the individual and the community, a place where our identities and our values are reinforced and transformed into a force for good in the world.

Both the smallest and biggest of celebrations are appropriate, along with everything in between. While writing at my desk, a majestic male red wing blackbird perched himself on the bush in front of the window. Being only a few feet from him, I could see his feathers in detail and his glorious preening for the benefit of the females.

You are wonderful, Lord,
    and you deserve all praise,
because you are much greater
    than anyone can understand.

Each generation will announce
to the next your wonderful
    and powerful deeds.
I will keep thinking about
your marvelous glory
    and your mighty miracles.
Everyone will talk about
    your fearsome deeds,
and I will tell all nations
    how great you are.
They will celebrate and sing
about your matchless mercy
    and your power to save. (Psalm 145:3-7, CEV)

On a much grander scale, today I gathered with a family at the bedside of their loved one to grieve his death, and to also remember and celebrate his life for the gift he had been to so many. Together we were able to say, “Let the whole world bless our God and loudly sing his praises.”

We pray. God answers. We rejoice. If we don’t rejoice in the company of others, then we eventually forget – which then makes the next hardship even harder.

The practice of telling our story is the means by which we come to understand our faith. Testimony not only declares what we believe, but is also the vehicle that shapes our belief. The psalmist issues an invitation for people to come and hear, and he will tell what God has done. The story, the psalmist’s testimony of faith, is a simple one, essentially saying: I prayed to God. God listened. God answered. Praise be to God! And I will now tell you about God.

Tell a Story

When the Bible speaks about God, it most often does so by telling a story of what God has done. The Bible, as a whole, follows the pattern of a story: creation, fall, redemption, and new creation.

Beginning in the Old Testament, we get stories of God’s creative activity, humanity’s fall into sin, and God’s response of covenant and promise. The Lord calls Abraham and Sarah and their ancestors to a special relationship with a special purpose to reclaim all the world to it’s intended design.

The story continues with the Exodus from Egypt, the giving of God’s divine commandments, the wandering in the wilderness, the conquest of the land, the monarchy and finally the exile.

The New Testament picks up the story, telling about Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises and spelling out the meaning of his death and resurrection.

The book of Acts continues the grand story of redemption and of what God has done, climaxing in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The apostles further the story by spreading good news of great joy: in Jesus Christ, there is grace, forgiveness, purpose, faith, hope, and love for all people everywhere.

In all the storytelling, remember to celebrate the mighty acts of God and declare what the Lord has done for you.

Creator God, because of your abundant love, you chose to bring light and order into the formless void, to create a world of unsurpassed beauty; and you saw that it was good. We ask that you continue to recreate the world with that same attentive love, to bring light into today’s ever increasing chaos and darkness. Replenish our hearts so that we too can renew the face of the earth, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

It Just Won’t Do… (Psalm 16)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Exploring Church Ministry Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Protect me, Lord God!
    I run to you for safety,
and I have said,
    “Only you are my Lord!
Every good thing I have
    is a gift from you.”

Your people are wonderful,
    and they make me happy,
but worshipers of other gods
    will have much sorrow.
I refuse to offer sacrifices
of blood to those gods
    or worship in their name.

You, Lord, are all I want!
You are my choice,
    and you keep me safe.
You make my life pleasant,
    and my future is bright.

I praise you, Lord,
    for being my guide.
Even in the darkest night,
    your teachings fill my mind.
I will always look to you,
as you stand beside me
    and protect me from fear.
With all my heart,
I will celebrate,
    and I can safely rest.

I am your chosen one.
You won’t leave me in the grave
    or let my body decay.
You have shown me
    the path to life,
and you make me glad
    by being near to me.
Sitting at your right side,
    I will always be joyful. (Contemporary English Version)

The psalmist is profoundly glad to be with God and God’s people – but not with worshipers of other gods.

We live in an age where there are many people who are glad about God – they have a deep sense of spirituality and rely upon prayer. But they are not at all glad about the church or any sort of organized religion. They want nothing to do with it.

Why? Because they’ve had a bad, even traumatic, experience with gathered worshipers. Their experience has been one of observing worshipers offer blood sacrifices to a god they aren’t familiar with.

Unfortunately, the spiritually wounded are walking among us, too numerous to count. And this is mostly why church attendance in the Western world has dropped precipitously. After all, nobody wants to be a part of something where a pastor or priest preys upon innocent people; where a congregation seeks more people just to get money for their building; or where the people justify hate toward others in the name of religion.

I don’t want that either. Namely, because I have seen and experienced those things myself within various faith communities. Persons who know me well have sometimes expressed, “Why do you keep pastoring churches? Why put yourself in that position again and again?” For me, it’s a simple, yet heartfelt answer. I typically respond with sincerity, “The church is a whore, but I still love her.”

For me, it won’t do to simply retreat into a privatized religion and forget about the church and God’s people; Christianity is communal, not just personal. I can no more forsake the family of God and my spiritual DNA any more than I could deny my family of origin and my biological DNA.

I’m not suggesting that any of us put up with bad behavior and folks acting like a stupid cow instead of a person. Instead, I am insisting that a well-rounded worship of God requires the individual to be intimately connected with a community of redeemed persons.

Holy Scripture knows nothing of a solitary independent believer who has no links to God’s people. And, I might add, it just won’t do to have a virtual social media presence but never actually interact with people in the flesh. That’s not old fashioned; it’s biblical wisdom.

At some point, we must trust God. If we put our life out there by driving on a highway every day; and if we take risks with investing money or starting something new; then it only makes spiritual sense that we also trust God to take care of us and protect us in dealing with not only the world, but also with the church and God’s people.

We might believe that joy comes from getting everything we want, or being alone and living as a hermit in the woods, or surrounding ourselves with animals instead of people; yet, we were created by God for community, and so, we shall only find joy in the context of community.

The path to death is littered with the remains of people who thought that separation from others (or particular persons) was the path to life. The forces of darkness still use the tactic of divide and conquer because it works. But if God’s people focus on what unites us, and we choose to lock arms in love, no matter what, we will learn that the hard path of life is worth it.

It won’t do, for church folk to belittle others who have run from organized religion; and conversely, it won’t do, for those far from the community, to play armchair quarterback and criticize everything the church does.

We really need to open our clenched fists of ensconced hermeneutical approaches, pet preachers, beloved programs, isolationist ways, heady cerebral thoughts, and petty pride, so that we can then hold hands with our sisters and brothers in humble trust and faith.

In this Christian season of Eastertide, we have the perspective of understanding that it takes a cross to have a resurrection, that there must be suffering before glory, and that sorrow always precedes joy. We now need to take the next step, by a willingness to put in the blood, sweat, and tears necessary for both a good relationship with God and a robustly helpful relationship with God’s people.

So, what will you choose? And what will you do?

God of all, we pray as one, that we may be one, just as the Lord Jesus prayed we may be one in him. Your son Jesus compels us to be reconciled to one another. May our spirits be joined to your Holy Spirit, so that we may witness to the visible unity of your Church. May we all recognize that we are truly one with you – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and grow together in peace. We ask this in the name of Jesus our risen Lord. Amen.