Dear friends in Christ at Peace and Grue,
It is Fall again, the time we have traditional set aside to give thanks for another season of growth, followed by a success harvest. Our Thanksgiving Service this year will again be a community service hosted by the Presbyterians on Tuesday, November 22 at 7:00 PM. Pastor Paul and I look forward to seeing you there.
When I think of giving thanks, I think of the Psalm. It has been said that the songs of a nation are more important than its laws. Songs get to the deep places of the heart, while the force of law is simple to manage the surface of things. Whoever would rule a people must write their songs as well as their law. The psalms are the songs of the people of Israel. In them they praise, give thanks, lament, bless and curse. In them Israel expresses their willingness to be ruled by God.
We Christians have also acknowledge a willingness to to be ruled through these ancient Israelite songs. For the Christian reader, the God of the psalms is the God who has broken the bonds of death for his children. According to the Psalm 8 people tame the sea, farm the earth, and have dominion over the birds, beasts, and fish. But this is not their doing, it is God who has made them and given them their rank in the scheme of things. Only death defeats them.
We die to being proteins to rise as a conceived cell. We die to prenatal security to rise to semi-independence as an infant. We die to Mom’s presence to rise as kindergarten students. We die to childhood to rise through that shredding machine called adolescence into our own identity as individuals and into intimacy as persons in relationship. We die to our couple hood to rise (usually at 3:00 AM) as parents. We die to parenting to rise to an empty nest of loneliness yet filled with new opportunities. Finally we face our physical death, our return to the dust out of which we were formed, but not as people that have no hope, for God is not dead. God will continue to act, as we pray with the psalmists and keep the faith, a faith that has grown enough to trust that God always sends a bigger Rising ahead.
When find a hint of this expressed in Psalm 30 where the speaker rejoices that God has heard his appeal for help: “Weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes in the morning.” This statement is by no means frivolous; the psalmist does not mean to say we need not take the wrath of God seriously, since it would, after all, blow over soon. Instead since it is the wrath of God, we should take it very seriously for the true motive of God’s wrath is grace which seeks to draw people in the ways of righteousness. This is what the psalmist has come to know through his own personal experience. The psalmist life was established anew by the grace of God. Now the psalmist wants the congregation to join him in praising that miracle of grace, concluding the psalm by vowing everlasting gratitude.
Setting aside time to give thanks for a season of growth and a successful harvest, looking at the world God has made, worshiping in the House of the Lord, is to sing to the Lord a new song, our song. The question at stake seems to be: will our songs become the songs of the world, and will the God of Jesus rule through our singing of them? The psalmists would surely agree.
In Christ,
Pastor Dan