...narrow minds, wide mercy, thank God

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea;

There’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty.

For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind;

And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.

---Frederick W. Faber, 1854

There is good news for us today, friends! God refuses to be restricted to the limits of our thoughts about God! What a humbling thought --- that our minds cannot conceive of the true nature of God’s mercy, grace, and provision. No matter how vast and gracious we make God in our minds, God is bigger and more loving. Even our idea of liberty as a high human and divine ideal is puny next to God’s sense of, and exercise of, justice. In a very real way, we have no idea what God is capable of!

We must be careful, I think, not to limit God to our own understanding, not to place labels on God that (by definition) will limit and diminish God’s essential nature. We would do well, I think, not to trade the limitless compassion of a mysterious God for the quantifiable allowances of a manageable god. In the end, if that is the trade we make, we miss out on so much of who God is.

 But thanks be to God! Whatever we think, feel, imagine…God…is…more.

...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?

...the song goes on

Lo! The apostolic train joins your sacred name to hallow;

prophets swell the glad refrain, and the white-robed martyrs follow.

And from morn to set of sun, through the church the song goes on.

---Ignaz Franz, 18th century

I haven’t spent much time up north, where lots of mighty rivers originate. I have heard that even the Mighty Mississippi begins as a tiny trickle somewhere up in Minnesota (or, #controversyalert, South Dakota!), before growing to one of the most powerful rivers in the world down south. I am reminded of its slightly more northerly section, and its building power, when I think of the heartbreaking scene in Huckleberry Finn in which Huck and Jim desperately try to resist the flow of the swollen Mississippi in an effort to navigate onto the Ohio, and freedom. But you can’t fight the current of a river that big.

And I’ve actually stood in the headwaters of our own ‘mighty Chattahoochee’ in the mountains not many hours’ drive from here. What starts small is added to by the trickle of tens, of hundreds, streams---until it is flowing with a calm force that will not be denied.

The song of praise that all creation sings had its genesis, well, you know, at the beginning. Can’t you imagine the first elements of creation finding voice and offering that gift up to Creator? And on, through the love story of God and God’s creation, the song has grown---tens, hundreds of trickles and rivulets merging and mingling to create one song that will not be denied.

Do you hear the people sing?

...refuge and strength

Though the earth give way
When the mountains sway
If the seas heave and roar
When I can't stand more---
God is our refuge and strength
A help ever present, we won't be afraid.
God is our refuge and strength
We'll dwell near you all of our days.
---from Psalm 46/para.laca.

No matter how the world changes under our feet...our God walks beside us.

Click below to hear the song setting of this Psalm paraphrase...

Though the Earth Give Way

...for a reason

We are called to be God’s prophets, speaking for the truth and right,

Standing firm for godly justice, bringing evil into light.

Let us seek the courage needed, our high calling to fulfill,

That we all may know the blessing of the doing of God’s will.

---Thomas A. Jackson, 1973

Prophet. When I see the word, my mind goes to seers, oracles, fortune-tellers, or at least future-tellers. Some guy dressed in outrageous rags with a more outrageous hair-do, straight up giving the king the business. Same dude, few days later, found tossed off the city heights or ripped limb from limb ‘under mysterious circumstances’. Is that your mental image, too? This does not sound like a highly sought-after gig, my people.  

In actuality, the word means something less spectacular, and more applicable to our lives today. A prophet is one who speaks a fresh word from God for the world. You see my meaning? We could all be called to be prophets, listening to the guidance of God as we share a fresh message of hope to the world. We could be the ones called to envision and embody the reign of Christ in the world. We could be the ones called to speak hope to despair. Strength to fear. Love to apathy. Welcome to mistrust. Plenty to scarcity.  Sound daunting? It does to me, too. But our help and courage comes from our close relatedness to Jesus and his message. Prophets. I am, and you are. All of us are called. And brothers and sisters, we have these voices for a reason.

...different, together.

God is here! As we Your people meet to offer praise and prayer,

May we find in fuller measure what it is in Christ we share.

Here, as in the world around us, all our varied skills and arts

Wait the coming of the Spirit into open minds and hearts.

---Fred Pratt Green, 1978

Here we are, God. We come to this place with an incredible array of talents, needs, resources, hurts, dreams, and personalities. It is quite amazing that we all keep coming here to make a church, isn’t it? What is it that keeps us coming back, that entices us to search for the things that bind us?

In the midst of our differences --- of need and resource, of faith and fear, of black and white and shades of gray --- we seek the coming of the Spirit of Christ. We await the Spirit, anticipate the Spirit --- to enliven us, to inform us, to enlarge us, to add meaning to our lives.

We pray, we praise, we seek, we anticipate…together