Sing When
It All Is NOT Going Well?
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
Like A Camper Left To Rot In the Field, When Junk Is All We Are, Also Then … ?
Psalm 35:18
Then I will thank you in the great congregation; in the mighty throng I will praise you.
Ephesians 5:19
… as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts,
Words of Grace For Today
“Then I will thank you …” When will we give God thanks?
Do we do this when, finally, in one of those rare moments, everything seems to be in order in the universe (or at least the small part we are aware of)?
Well, those moments are worthy of giving God thanks and praise, worthy of singing among ourselves and in our hearts.
But those moments are rare, maybe coming once a week, or even once a month or once a year. For some it seems they come once in a lifetime.
What about all the other times? The real shtako times, when the universe is dumping all the rot of garbage in our laps, all over our lives, in every path we try to walk forward on until we slip and slide, collapse and can at best cry for help? What about all the other mediocre times when nothing is good and nothing is really bad, except we just don’t really have a good reason to struggle again to try to make things better, since we’ve tried so many times in the past and nothing changes? What about all the times when we are just about to celebrate a tiny step towards better and someone stomps all over the possibility like someone stomping out a troublesome ant?
Can we really sing among ourselves and to ourselves, filled with thanks and praise for God?
Nope.
Not on our own.
Not at all, Not at all.
But …
…
but by the power of the Spirit in us, given to us by God, even in the slippery, gooey times of shtako, dumped on us by the universe, we can and do give God thanks and praise
for breath
for faith
for love
for hope
that sustains us through it all.
So also today, we sing our thanks and praise to God from our hearts.