...befriended

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy works and defend thee;

Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,

If with his love he befriend thee.

---Joachim Neander, 1680, tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1863

This particular hymn text astounds me. Penned in 1680 (the translation made in 1868), this text deals with the nature of God’s power. What is amazing to me is the intimate nature of the relationship the writer envisions between the powerful God of the universe and everyday people like us (h/t to Sly and the Family Stone). I know I shouldn’t, but I tend to think of intimacy with God as a contemporary thought; this text brings me up short. This familiarity, this friendship, is nothing evolved with our relational thinking; this has been a part of the way many before you and me have experienced God’s care for God’s beloved. I am asked to ponder anew what friendship with God can mean to regular folk like me.

What does it mean to be friends with God? How does this new identity affect the way I view my worth, my potential, my value? And how would being God’s friend change the way I walk this earth, the way I relate to the rest of humanity? How would being God’s friend make me a more compassionate, more understanding, more tender friend to you? What kind of effect does that kind of friendship have?

With friends like that…would we have enemies?

...befriend me

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy works and defend thee;

Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,

If with his love he befriend thee.

---Joachim Neander, 1680

This particular hymn text astounds me. Penned in 1680 (the translation made in 1868), this text deals with the nature of God’s power. What is amazing to me is the intimate nature of the relationship the writer envisions between the powerful God of the universe and regular gals and fellas like us. I know I shouldn’t, but I tend to think of intimacy with God as a contemporary thought; this text brings me up short. This familiarity, this friendship, is nothing evolved with our relational thinking; this has been a part of the way many before you and me have experienced God’s care for God’s beloved. I am asked to ponder anew what friendship with God can mean to regular folk like me.

What does it mean to be friends with God? How does this new identity affect the way I view my worth, my potential, my value? And how would being God’s friend change the way I walk on this earth, the way I relate to the rest of humanity? How would being God’s friend make me a more compassionate, more understanding, more tender friend to you? What kind of effect does that kind of friendship have?

...I'll be good sometime

 Take my life, lead me, Lord, take my life, led me, Lord,

Make my life useful to Thee.

---R. Maines Rawls, 1968

I was sitting up late one night during a holiday break, when college-age children were ‘home’ for a bit. My cell phone chime startled me out of a thoughtful reverie (ok, Sarah, I was probably asleep in the green chair), and I picked it up to read the following text message: I’ll be good sometime. After my heart stopped racing, I was able to decipher the message; the sender’s predictive texting had interpreted the entered word ‘home’ as the word ‘good’ (same letters on the T9 keypad). And while I’ll be home sometime isn’t terribly specific, it is much more comforting than  I’ll be good sometime.

In this life, most of us can handle being called to ‘goodness’. We can do that, even if it is only ‘sometimes’. But, God knows, brothers and sisters, we are called to more than goodness. We are called to usefulness, to service, to faithfulness to the Savior who poured out his own life for ours.

Friends, we are not called just to be good; we are called to be good for something.

...beloved, and loving

All who hunger, sing together; Jesus Christ is living bread.

Come from loneliness and longing. Here, in peace, we have been led.

Blest are those who from this table live their days in gratitude.

Taste and see the grace eternal. Taste and see that God is good.

---Sylvia Dunstan, 1990

Communion. Union. Community. From the Latin communio, ‘sharing in common’. This word, communion, speaks to the deep loneliness and longing for fellowship settled in the souls of so many of us, waking faint stirrings of…hope, maybe? There are so many periods of isolation and sequestration in this busy, noisy life---many of them in the midst of the noise and busy-ness of everyday life. So many days which stretch from end to end with no real human interaction breaking through workaday, rote communication, or days of solitary pursuits.

Into this lonesome landscape shines the chance to gather at the table of our Brother Jesus, eating and drinking of love and sacrifice, telling each other the stories that bind us to Christ and to each other. The table draws us---not strangers but family, not hurried and harried but grateful and blessing, not fearful of rejection but cherished and welcoming. This table calls us empty, and we feed each other. This table draws us, and sends us. This table makes of us beloved, and loving.

Oh, taste and see…

...bound like that

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above.

---Robert Robinson, 1758

It might be easy to see this verse as a guilt trip. What kind of lousy follower am I? Prone to wander, in debt to grace, I need a fetter --- a chain --- to bind me to God. Ouch. Then I remember that this hymn, as so much of life, is not about me. This hymn explores not human nature, frail and failing though it be. This text is all about the nature of God, a God who loves us enough to pursue us, to bind us to Godself with chains --- chains made not of might or threat, or violence, but of goodness. And in my inmost heart, I long to be held close to the heart of God, with fetters that tender. I am a debtor. For God’s unfailing mercy, I owe a debt I will never repay. Through God’s grace, freely given, I owe nothing.

Because of the weightlessness of my bonds, I will serve always out of love and gratitude. I’m bound like that.

...(be)friended by the Almighty

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy works and defend thee;

Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,

If with his love he befriend thee.

---Joachim Neander, 1680/trans. Catherine Winkworth, 1863

This particular hymn text astounds me. Penned in 1680 (the translation made in 1868), this text deals with the nature of God’s power. What is amazing to me is the intimate nature of the relationship the writer envisions between the powerful God of the universe and regular gals and fellas like us. I know I shouldn’t, but I tend to think of intimacy with God as a contemporary thought; this text brings me up short. This concept is nothing born with our relational thinking, but has been a part of the way many before you and me have wondered about God’s care for us. I am asked to ponder anew what friendship with God can mean to regular people like me.

What does it mean to be friends with God? And how would being on God’s ‘friends list’ change the way I walk on this earth, the way I relate to the rest of humanity? What kind of effect does that kind of friendship have?