The Gate of Praise

I was recently struck by a Scripture verse that I happened to read in passing.  It was Isaiah 60:18b:  “You will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise” (Isaiah 60:18b, NIV).   The chapter from which this verse is taken is a description of the wonderful things that God is going to do for His people, the people of Zion.  It may refer primarily to God’s actions in the new age at the end of time, but I think this particular verse also can apply, in a very real way, to our relationship with God here and now.  So often in our lives, the hurts and disappointments we experience lead us to create barriers that hamper our relationship with God and others, walls built upon our feelings of guilt and shame.  Our own willfulness or selfishness can also be a barrier to open and honest communion with God and with those whom we love.  Walls are built and the gates to true intimacy and trust are closed. 

How can we break down these walls and open our hearts to true relationship again?  I think that living in praise to God is a key to making this happen.  Praise is a gateway to God and to a deeper relationship with the Trinity.  The practice of seeing God in each person, in all things, and continually lifting up our hearts in praise can lead us out of our selves, break down unnecessary walls, and open new doors that lead us into the fullness of life God desires for us.  It is an attitude that takes time and patience to cultivate, and needs to be continually practiced.  However, it is most important to remember that Christ has already broken through the barriers of sin and death.  He has opened for us the door to new life in Him, in God.  Praising God for this gift of new life—and for the new life to be found everywhere—can lead us through the Door to salvation and abundant life in Him.  I Peter 2:9 says:  “you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”.  May God help us to live a life of praise, to walk through the Door of Christ who is our Way, and may we—as individuals and as a church community—be a gateway to God for others. 

Endings….and beginnings

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Rev. 1:8

Last grant of the season is finished.

Last week of Lent is almost completed.

We have put away the winter coats and boots (while still gazing suspiciously into the gray sky).

Start to plan for wrapping up Sunday School and Forum.

At this time of year, I feel the satisfaction that faculty and students feel as they contemplate two semesters almost completed, with the end of the academic year in sight. A few days till Easter and then a few weeks till Pentecost, and, in a way, the church’s “school year” is over. In my mind, Trinity Sunday is like graduation. At least in this parish, where it is our patronal feast day, and we often celebrate with a picnic after the service.

Awareness of the endings opens the possibility for wonderful new beginnings: summer vacation, long-awaited summer workshops, a new Vacation Bible School program, time and space to think and plan. And pray. The delight and rapture of Easter seeps through the solemnity of Holy Week

Sometimes there is a sadness when I contemplate endings. But when I couple the endings with the beginnings, the feeling is quite different. I wonder if the sense of anticipation and scent of incoming freshness is the gift of a God who is both the beginning and the ending?

--Laura Howell

“If you focus on what needs to be changed, your brain will start scanning for things that are wrong and see more and more of them and change will be hard. If you focus on a core value and tie the changes to that, when the value will function as its own center of gravity and change will be easy.” This was the opening to a class on diversity and multiculturalism a few weeks ago. It was also the week following the first Sunday of Lent, so, of course, my brain made connections. Change is hard. Change, if done right, should be easy. We enter Lent with the expectation of being changed (or, at least, renewed.) We focus on our flawed selves, our mortality, our sin, but also on God, eternity, forgiveness. What value grounds us in that walk through the wilderness and onward through Holy Week and into Easter?

I think that I struggle with Lent each year because the focus can to often be on what is wrong, the flaws, the sin, to the extent that the real focus can be obscured. How does one turn the focus from the myriad ways that we turn away from God and back onto God, totally and completely? It seems to me that Jesus, the One Who we follow into this desert, made it clear that our core value is to be love: love of God, love of neighbor, and love of each other. That seems so simple, yet we make it so difficult. Individually I know that I am guilty of anger, pettiness, self-centeredness, and fear, all of which blunt the capacity to love and obscure my vision of God and of others. Collectively the church as a whole cracks under the weight of centuries of putting its emphasis in the wrong places. Yet God loves us and fills us and uses us, alone and together, in spite of ourselves, and, in spite of ourselves, we are changed and we even become change.

O God, as I near the end of this walk through the Lenten wilderness, let me keep my eyes fixed on you. Water my barren soul, when change is hard. Let me rest in you, that change may be easy. Within my heart and in my world, may spring come by your hand and the desert bloom. Amen.

- Kathleen Knaack

Hunger

I long for your salvation, O LORD,*

and your law is my delight.

 Let me live, and I will praise you,*

and let your judgments help me.

I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost;*

search for your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.

-Psalm 119:174-176

On a rare Monday off, I find I am able to drink a full cup of coffee while it is still hot and relish in the Sunday New York Times. I love the book reviews and the crossword. I love reading Sunday in review and catching up on all the news that does not bleed into this house of no television. This is usually our Sunday ritual after church but time has been tight the past few months and often the newspaper sit unopened until Wednesday, when with guild I open it and try desperately to read as much as possible. Some days all I seem to see are articles on greed, war, fashion, and hate crimes. Today is different. I see with rested eyes. Inside I find a piece I might not have seen had I been in a hurry. It’s an article on the research of how when we are hungry, we are more likely to translate words and images and perceive them as being related to food.  The study finds this holds true for moral hunger as well. We see what we desire most. 

God, help me to remember that what is most important to me is what I will see in the world.  Help me to hunger for what is good and right and true and lovely.  Amen.

- Ellyn Siftar 

Impatiently Waiting

"O Israel, wait for the LORD, for with the LORD there is mercy; with him there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins." - Psalm 130:6-7

We're an impatient bunch, we humans. It is perhaps most especially true in an age when we can get information delivered to the palms of our hands almost instantly, we don't like to wait, for anything. We want what we want, and we want it NOW, because there are far too many things which just have to be done to waste any time waiting.

But... what if we stopped to wait, just for a moment? What might we see? Might we even encounter Jesus himself, offering us the mercy and redemption we tend to forget is there amid the busy-ness of our daily life and work?

My favorite musical setting of Psalm 130 comes from John Rutter's Requiem. It begins with a solo cello undergirding the alto and bass voices, with what the composer himself calls a, "knocking at the door." While he is fairly clear that he intended it as an echo of humanity's knocking at God's door, it might also be taken as God knocking on OUR door. The only answer to that can be as the Psalmist has it, that with him there is plenteous redemption, and that our very act of responding to God's presence places us squarely in the camp of the redeemed.

You can listen to the piece here, and watch Mr. Rutter explain the process of composition here.

- Amy+

Seeing into the Infinite

I think that we have made God too small. In our culture we compose parameters around Him, confine Him to churches, and maybe even just to Sunday worship. It helps us to think of Him like a human being which is easier for our minds to comprehend, but sometimes, I think that we forget God’s divine powers that exist in the known universe.

I own this book of images from the space telescope entitled, Hubble, Window to the Universe by Giles Sparrow. Enclosed within its 225 pages, I get to see Eternity, Home of God. I can see where stars are born and where they die; star fields of infinite beauty that stretch across the pages like an artist’s canvas. Planets spin, galaxies swirl, clusters form and reform; God has shown us the depth and breadth of His worlds. I can only gape in astonishment.

There’s one photograph that is special to me called The Pillars of Creation. It is composed of dark gas, shaped like pillars, glowing with a soft yellow radiance, illuminating the area surrounding them with tints of green, teal, and brown. A fuchsia-colored star is a beacon flashing beyond them, set like a jewel gleaming in
the Great Beyond. Here stars are birthed.

To look at the photographs in this book is to me seeing the hand of God at work in the cosmos. The universe is exploding with color: yellows, oranges, soft blues, purple, violet, greens, pink, yellows, the whole gamut of the spectrum. It is the ultimate watercolor splashed across a telescopic field. Everywhere is infused with stars, bright and bold, soft and hazy, bringing the canvas to life.

For God to empty Himself of all of this to take on a human form is even more astonishing to me. To care about us, to love us, to want to be with us, how could a Being be so contained? And yet, He was. Sometimes, we get a glimpse of that power and majesty that created all of universe, as in when Jesus calmed the storm or was transfigured on the mountain with Peter and John or when the earth was in upheaval when He died. The energy of the Resurrection may be the same energy used by the stars. The hand that brushed the stellar nurseries, that breathed life onto a barren earth at the beginning of recorded time, that controls the where and when of not only space, but of space-time, decided to come to earth to save us all.

In our limited way, the breath of the Universe, metaphorically God’s breath, is visible for all of us to see. When we go outside and look up at the stars, we are looking into the past, a marvel of engineering that involves our brains and sight. The glitter of the constellations shows us signposts that stimulate our imaginations, but underneath all the wonder is the utter marvel of it all, the absolute stupendous power of God’s thought turned into action. Our God is a God of infinite majesty. Let us witness His signature that He left among the stars, this great gift of His to carry in our hearts, and let us remember that even though He holds the galaxies in the His consciousness, so too does He care enough about us to do the same.

- S. Becker

Lesson for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 11:33 When Jesus saw  her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you lain him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 36 Jesus began to weep.

It has been said that it is only recently that theologians think of God weeps in sympathy for ills which befall us in life and upon dying in this world. Those theologians are behind the times. Jesus weeps several times in the Gospels, including once (at least profound mourning) for John the Baptist (Matthew 14:13). If we are to take the Trinity seriously, this must signal God’s weeping, seen through Jesus.

In all cases of disaster, either physical or spiritual, God is on the side of all those afflicted and the tears are both of grief and renewal. This is a difference between the Old Testament and the New. Job’s God does not care that Job suffers. The fact that Job is rewarded hardly repays him for his lost family and suffering.

While Reformation theologies of double predestination have an Old Testament ring, giving the impression of an uncaring God, they overlook this message of the Gospel. God weeps when you suffer, and He expects his faithful to relieve your suffering to the best of their ability.

 

Now you say you're sorry
For being so untrue
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried, a river over you
-- “Cry Me a River” by Arthur Hamilton

Published by Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.