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Join us this Thursday at 7:30 CDT as we wrap our series, “Praying the Psalms.”

You can access the study group here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274
Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Happiness and the Avid Learner

Around 500 BCE, when Israel’s priests compiled the anthology we now know as the Book of Psalms, they were very intentional about its organization. Based solely on content, it’s apparent the editors considered how the poems conversed with one another—how one psalm’s placement before or after another added dimension to both. We don’t know exactly how the collection was used in worship or daily devotion. But a through-line is clearly detectable, a certain way of seeing and engaging the world and its Creator that the editors sought to instill in the hearts and minds of Israel.

Psalm 1 offers a wonderful contrast of parallels that launches wisdom as one of the book’s crucial themes. It paints the portrait of a contented individual and explains why that person does so well. First, it explains he or she avoids foolish company. “The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and doesn’t sit with the disrespectful,” the poet tells us. Instead, happy people “love the Lord’s instruction and they recite [it] day and night!” (Ps. 1:1-3).

That is to say, the person who can discern foolishness and not be lured into its trap is someone who’s hungry for wisdom. The happy person loves God’s instruction so intensely he or she can (and does) recite it at all hours. Thus the Book of Psalms begins with a fascinating idea: enthusiastic learning is foundational to wisdom. More than that, according Psalm 1, it’s key to success. Everything the avid learner does prospers.

Scholars frequently observe that the “B” side of Psalm 1’s ringing endorsement of the commoner’s learning and wisdom is Psalm 2’s warning to rulers. (These pairings are a recurring trait in the collection) The privileged class’s rants and imaginings baffle the writer. Their behavior is decidedly unwise and the abuses that result from their villainy lead to trouble. “Wise up!” verse 10 says, lest the Lord “become angry, and your way will be destroyed” (Ps. 2:12). Taken together, the two psalms paint a powerful picture of the benefits derived from loving wisdom versus the penalties levied against those who foolishly rely on unrighteous counsel.

The Psalms’ wisdom couldn’t be more timely, as each day’s “breaking news” breaks our hearts and hurts our heads. With each day, our leaders’ mental health seems increasingly questionable. Their eagerness to attend to conspiracy theorists and gonzo sensationalists paints a grim picture of hardship that lay ahead for our country. These folks who brag about all their business savvy and powerful connections should know better! The good news is wisdom isn’t a precious gift that only the privileged classes can afford. It’s a simple thing to gain, provided you have the clarity of mind and integrity of intention to reach for it. The Psalms begin by portraying ordinary people who know how to gain obtain extraordinary insight that rewards them bountifully. It’s wise to seek wisdom. That’s the headline in today’s psalms.

Join us this Thursday evening as we continue our look at the psalms with a special focus on the wisdom poems. We meet online at 7:30p CDT via Zoom. See the info below to find out how to access the study.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274
Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

What Good Looks Like

God, give your judgments to the king – Psalm 72:1

Being a church nerd, I love visiting congregations with innovative worship styles. Discovering a hymnal I’ve never seen is an added treat. I’m always curious about how the songs are indexed and what other content the editors included. To most folks, all that matters is readable print and manageable size. (Nobody sings well if the type is tiny or the book weighs too much.) But for somebody like me an new hymnal opens a window on the spiritual and theological persuasions of its users. What’s going on in a hymnbook says quite a lot about what’s going on in the pews where it rests.

Sometimes the editors go to great lengths to call out special occasions: Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, Wedding, Funeral, and so on. And when you thumb through the selections, it appears poets and composers thought about these moments enough to write songs specifically for them.

This is hardly a new-fangled approach. Scattered throughout The Psalms’ many laments, thanksgivings, and praises, one comes across an occasional poem that is, strictly speaking, occasional. Most often, the hymn is composed for an historic event tied to Israel’s monarchy and the songs, often referred to as “royal psalms,” refer directly—often quite candidly—to the nation’s leader. Some songs come in the form of prayers. Others extol the ruler’s virtues. Often they compare their king to monarchs of surrounding nations. (Surprise! Israel always has the better ruler.) They’re unabashed in their eagerness to idealize a place that, if the Hebrew Bible’s history is correct, often seats unrepentant scoundrels, adulterers, thieves, liars, and connivers. But you wouldn’t know it from the poems.

God, give your judgments to the king, we read in the opening line of Psalm 72. That’s a prayer we should pray for our own leaders. But the royal psalms go beyond vague wishes. They help Israel define what good looks like. The prayer becomes political. It speaks the will of the people, which in turn, defers to the divine will. In other words, the nation and God are aligned. The question becomes how well the king lives up to expectations.

Quite often royal psalms are dismissed as anachronistic relics of an ancient form of government. Worse still, some try to turn them into messianic prophecies, which they are not. But these songs remain relevant because they speak to an urgent need in any time or place: the hope for honest, upright, and caring leadership. These psalms are yardsticks we can use even now to measure how well our own government is doing. And they set a high enough standard to ensure there is always room for improvement.

Join us this coming Thursday as we continue our series “Praying the Psalms” with a closer look at the royal psalms. We meet at 7:30p CDT via Zoom. You can access the study here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274
Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Our Stories Tell a Bigger Story

“Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through!”

The first time I heard it I laughed out loud. I was driving to Sunday worship with the radio cranked up full-volume to the local gospel music station. The host, a fierce woman with the on-air persona of a warrior, shouted it in agreement with a caller who was giving God thanks for always making a way and bringing him out of trouble.

I laughed because I immediately understood what she meant. I shouted “Amen!” out loud to no one in particular. And then tears began to flow. Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through!

Sparing you the gory details, there’s no telling what I would look like. But I promise it would not be pretty. One thing I’ll say without hesitation: once that seed was planted, it has continued to produce a profound sense of thanksgiving in me—the kind of thanksgiving that provokes awe and humility and jubilation and effusiveness.

Biblical psalms of thanksgiving pivot on similar emotions. The poets are shamelessly grateful they don’t look like what they’ve been through. In some cases, their poems are hymns intended for the entire community to sing together. In others, they express personal gratitude for God’s mercy and goodness. Some of the thankful psalms are longwinded and rather exaggerated (even melodramatic) in their enthusiasm. Others border on gut-wrenching in their raw recognition of how saving grace and deliverance changed their lives.

All thanksgiving psalms testify. They describe a singular journey from lamentable life seasons of disorientation and despair and resolve in recognition of divine help. Yet they touch common nerves and resound with common themes. These accounts are shaped for sharing. The psalmists realize their stories take shape and accrue power when they’re told… or prayed… or sung.

“Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through” presumes others are getting a good look at you and seeing beauty, composure, confidence, health—all the things that belie the struggles behind your testimony. It assumes folks are interested in your story because they either a) have their own stories to tell or b) need to hear stories from folks lived to tell the tale.

Our course, our gratitude pleases God. But it also reaches us in ways that only testimony can. We are living proof of divine grace. Our personal stories tell a bigger, shared story. We belong to God and one another and whatever details may give our thanksgiving unique features and texture, our gratitude resounds with the same theme: Thank God we don’t look like what we’ve been through. Amen and ashé!

Don’t miss this week’s conversation about thanksgiving as we continue our series, Praying the Psalms. We meet live online every Thursday at 7:30p CDT via Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274

Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Beyond Language

The preacher approaches the pulpit. The people’s spirits haven’t yet entered the worship; the Spirit of God hovers, waiting to be recognized. The preacher realizes the people need an extra nudge and she reaches for a golden oldie: “God is good all the time!” she calls out and immediately the congregation erupts: “All the time God is good!”

For some—possibly many—it’s an answer that comes as quickly as “You’re welcome” follows “Thank you.” But if we scanned the faces, we might see who’s declaring God’s unfailing goodness with full intention and who’s running on autopilot. And we could discern a fresh touch of Spirit entering their beings (and room), a surge of awe and joy and trust.

God is good all the time. All the time God is good. – This is what we call a “praise trope,” a phrase handed down from generation to generation that touches nerves and demands attention. There is power in praise, something the biblical poets understood all too well. That’s why, although their psalms are predominated by laments, they named the poetry collection Praises (Tehelim in biblical Hebrew).

When a biblical poet crafts a hymn of praise, it’s a breathtaking work. God takes center stage as a source of wonder and jubilation. The praise Psalms declare God’s glory writ large across the universe and brought down to size in human-like attributes. In Psalms the language of praise is remarkably elastic. God is a tower of refuge (61:3), but also a mother hen (36:7); God leads us like a shepherd (23:1) and reigns like a king (97:1). We are awestruck before God and yet we are at ease to speak our minds.

There are moments when psalms swing between these two polarities with such bravado we almost get whiplash. Try to track all the praise set loose in this justifiably famous verse from Psalm 8: “When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made—the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place—what are human beings that you think about them; what are human beings that you pay attention to them?” The Divine Creator is also the Cosmic Keeper who is also the Caring Attendant.

The tension in moments like this arises from inadequacy of language. God is all of those things. And yet, strictly speaking, God is none of tem, because God is always more than we can convey in speech. Indeed, Psalm 19 lets the heavens and sky proclaim God’s handiwork because there aren’t words to capture its vastness.

So speech is futile. But praise is fertile, because in proclaiming God’s greatness we reach for words that hold tremendous personal meaning. Who is God to you? Proclaim that. (There are no right or wrong answers because there aren’t good enough words for the task.) When we praise we declare and define our faith. When I say, “God is good,” it means something very personal to me. When you say the same, it can mean something very different. Yet we can say it together because inadequacy of language gives rise to perfect—yet distinctive—praise.

We’ll dig deeper into this idea of praise and how it works at our weekly study at Gather. Join us this Thursday evening at 7:30p CDT via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274

Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Don’t Edit Yourself Out of Your Testimony

Do you remember the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), when folks who’d gone missing are reunited with their loved ones? It’s one of Spielberg’s finest moments—so utterly full of joy it makes us cry. I have similar feelings when I read about the great witness reunion in the Revelation. In this vision, survivors come from “every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Rev. 7:9). They wear white robes and hold palms. Christ-like suffering has purified them. They carry peace signs.

“Who are these people?” someone asks. The same person answers: “They’ve come out of great hardship.” God will be their shelter. They’ll no longer hunger or thirst. They’ll be protected from blazing heat. Their tears will be wiped away. We later learn they survived by “the word of their witness” (Rev. 12:11). Not even death could end their story. They’re martyrs.

While we often associate “martyrs” with dying for a higher cause, it actually means “witnesses”—i.e., survivors who lived to tell their stories. Many of us are martyrs and don’t even know it. We’ve survived all kinds of struggles. We’ve come out of great hardship. We’ve been to Calvary (many of us many times). We’ve found peace. And we’ve discovered the power in our witness. Our stories empower and embolden and sustain us. What’s more they inspire and assure others.

COVID-19 is calling for martyr testimony. Even as we pray for stamina to outlast the virus, we should think about our story. How are we being changed? What has this brush with death done to us? How has this experience brought us to closer to God and one another? What will our stories be?

Telling our truth means acknowledging how ugly and demoralizing this has been. How will we tell that story? We have great examples in the Psalms, where lament surfaces on nearly every page. The poets were unabashed about voicing frustrations, doubts, and despairs, impatience with God, and anger with arrogant kings and greedy, faithless neighbors. Cleaning up their stories would distort their witness into fairy tales. To deny their misgivings about God would erase God from the story. And they were having none of that.

As you consider your coronavirus testimony, tell your whole truth. Don’t edit yourself out. Write your lament. Complain about how hard this has been. Wonder where God went and why our leaders ignored obvious warning signs that death was knocking at every border (and no wall on earth was high enough keep COVID-19 out). Rail at neighbors who cared more about their social lives and investments than rampant loss of life. Go ahead. It’s part of your story.

But, like the psalmists and Revelation witnesses, know what waits beyond the complaint. Truthfully telling our story moves us forward, to the throne of Grace, where we find shelter and shepherding, where conflict and tears become useless because the I AM who makes All Things Well is right where God has always been: with us.

This week we look at lament in the Psalms. It’s raw, even shocking. But it’s also life giving. Join us this Thursday at 7:30a CDT via Zoom.

Join the study at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274

Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Following Our Ancestors

During the past weeks, I’ve been thinking about my elders, meaning the wise older folks I grew up around in church. As a Boomer, I grew up around people who’d been through quite a bit: a devastating Depression, widespread material insecurity, a global war and ripple-effect conflicts in Asia, very real threats of nuclear attack, cultural upheaval, outbreaks of polio and other infectious diseases, presidential scandals, and terrorist attacks by homegrown villains—and that’s just the short list. It also doesn’t include many personal disasters that were no less devastating.

But I’ve not been dwelling on their tribulations so much as recalling how they responded to crisis in a surprisingly consistent, intuitive way. When trouble came, they quoted the Psalms, usually in the florid “biblical” language of the King James Version.

In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust… Lead me to the rock that is higher than I… In the time of trouble he shall hide me… God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…

How did they know these verses so well to have them in ready reach? Their parents and grandparents quoted them, and their parents and grandparents quoted them, going all the way back to the ancients who sang these songs and prayed these prayers.

The Psalms are, in many ways, our ancestral legacy. They rejoice in God’s beauty and power and care, even as they paint compelling portraits of human lives and communities. The psalms often tell ugly and disturbing stories: wars and famines and widespread disease visited on communities while doubt and unfaithfulness and profound (in some cases nearly neurotic) anxieties tear at the writers’ hearts and minds. Danger and distress are all around in the Psalms. But that’s not all. God is there too.

That’s why it’s wisest, I think, to consider the Psalms as much more than a hymnal. It’s a prayer primer, a priceless example of how to pray in time of peril. In fact, it’s commonly assumed the Psalms’ durability is rooted in their prayerfulness. The majority of the poems are either laments or supplications, and even those of “praise song” variety regularly turn their hearts toward prayer.

Maybe the reason our ancestors loved the Psalms so much had less to do with their poetic beauty and more to do with their prayerful pragmatism.

In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard me, one of the psalmists wrote. In times of peril—even today—that’s a wonderful and necessary reassurance.

Join us this coming Thursday at 7:30p CDT as we being a new, life-giving series called “Praying the Psalms.” We will meet each week via Zoom. You can access the study at

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274, Password: 318652

Or you can dial in at:

1-312-626-6799 and then enter the ID and password information when prompted.

Love is the Answer

It’s a Thursday evening, around the holidays. People are pouring into the city to visit relatives and honor ancient traditions. The markets are packed. A lot of last-minute planning—so much to do! Things feel especially tense, tenser than usual. But holidays always bring out the troublemakers and crazies and would-be messiahs.

Just a few days back some northerner staged a crazy parade that lampooned Roman power by doing everything on the cheap. No impressive stallions; just a young donkey. No royal carpets stretched along the route; just a bunch of threadbare coats and a few palm branches. No trumpets and cheers; just a chorus of tone-deaf provincials croaking, “Hosanna! Save us!” It was a bold move. But few noticed, given the chaotic crowds and heightened police presence.

Apparently, the self-appointed savior didn’t get the attention he needed. The next morning he turned the Temple market upside down. Called the merchants and religious leaders “thieves.” It got real ugly. And if he makes it through the week alive if will be a miracle. All it takes is one troublemaker to mess things up for everybody.

With all of this swirling around Jesus of Nazareth, it’s an odd time for a wanted man to host an intimate dinner party, maybe not the smartest move given tensions surfacing inside hiscircle. Friendships are cracking.

There’s a bounty on the Jesus’s head, a lot of cash, about $200 worth, which can feed a lot of people, fund a lot of projects. Something to consider. Then there’s guilt by association. If Jesus gets arrested, who’s next? These folks have families to think of, businesses to run, lives to live. They didn’t come all this way to land in jail!

Maybe this dinner isn’t such a good idea.

But they go and immediately everything turns upside down. (Doesn’t it always, though?) The guest of honor insists on washing their feet, a task so menial it’s usually relegated to a servant girl. Then Jesus reveals there’s a traitor and liar among them. Does he send either away? No! He shares his food with the traitor and lets the liar stay for the entire meal.

It’s all very strange. But not as strange as the topic Jesus keeps returning to. And that’s love. Jesus knows the storm isn’t lifting any time soon. He knows forces at work in the world will continue to captivate the minds and fears of millions. He knows the public is fickle and can’t be counted on to do what’s best for them. He knows the disciples are going to spend a lot of long days and nights hunkered down behind closed doors, keeping their distance from danger that walks the streets. Jesus knows the only thing to sustain them will be unshakable faith in the power of love—God’s love, his love, the shared love of his beloved friends.

Love is the commandment because love carries us through the storm, whether it’s a political firestorm in first century Jerusalem or a 21st-century pandemic that viciously preys on theplanet’s weakest and poorest. The broken governments of both eras are fueled by untrammeled greed, power plays, and brutal disregard for the truly needy. Both governments have no realsolutions and reliable answers for their problems.

Yet the word for us this Holy Week is not “fear.” It’s “love.” Love is how we ride out this storm. Love is our assurance that life ultimately overpowers death. Love is the core message that causes us to proclaim, “This is not the end of us!” Easter is coming. Amen.

Join us this week as Gather revisits Jesus’s farewell dinner with his friends. We will meet virtually via Zoom on Thursday, April 9, at 7:30p CDT. Join the conversation by going to https://us04web.zoom.us/j/998881155?pwd=NExiTTl6eUhmck85V0lUMWpZNWswQT09. Meeting ID: 998 881 155; Password: 031850

An agnostic friend texted me the other day:

“When this is all over, you’ll have something in common with literally every other inhabitant of the planet: ‘What did you do during the Pandemic?’ Maybe we’ll find we have more in common than we previously thought. That comforts me.”

There can be no doubt that what we’re going through is life altering. We’re confronting how little we actually control and we’re being called to accountability for the things we can manage. We’re suddenly and strangely aware of our personal space. We recognize that recklessness on our part holds serious implications for those around us. We’re learning the true meaning of patience, as another friend who survived COVID-19 recently told me.

We’re changing, and our choices in this crisis insist we do better. Our instincts for self-preservation extend beyond us to include everyone around us. If we are careless with ourselves, we are uncaring about others. That’s transformative thinking in a world that has habitually sacrificed community for individualism, ethical principals for economic profits, compassion for self-righteousness. The invisible space between “I” and “we” has narrowed dramatically, even though we’re keeping our physical distance. We are changing.

Nearly all transformation—real transformation, that is—comes with fear, anxiety, and trepidation attached. It ushers us into of uncertainty. It puts before us open roads with no discernable destination. To change is to become something other than, hopefully better than, maybe more than. Yet when our Maker and the planet force transformation on us, we should expect something good to emerge in what we’re becoming. News reports whisk us around the globe and the stories are all the same because (as my friend reminds us) we are the same. That will lead to comfort, even if we’ll likely travel through much grief and despair.

The Franciscan mystic, Sister Ilia Delio, is a wonderful hybrid—a theologian and scientist whose embrace of evolutionary theory yields a powerfully enlightened view of spirituality. We’re constantly changing, she tells us. “Chaos really is a saving grace… We emerge out of this long, cosmic process we call evolution. But evolution is about deep relationality. We are created for love, and that’s what keeps pulling us onward.”

As we wander through this COVID-19 desert, may we be increasingly mindful of what we’re becoming—of how we’re evolving—of what God is doing to bring forth transformation. May we never forget that love keeps pulling us onward. Its claim cannot be shaken. It calls us into, through, and out of the dangers that currently encompass us.

We are changing. We are becoming. Love is drawing us to new ways of being.

This week we’ll explore Sr. Ilio Delio in more depth as the final voice in our “Into the Mystic” Lenten series. Join us Thursday evening at 7:30p CDT as we learn more about the mystical aspects of living in an ever-changing world.

NOTE: We will meet via Zoom to enable better interactivity. It will be an exciting time together! The study can be accessed here: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/935975182. (No password is necessary.) You can also join by phone at 312-626-6799. The meeting number is 935 975 5182#.

Renewal in a Stable

No one paid much attention as William Seymour boarded the train from Houston to Los Angeles. It was 1906. He was an African-American of modest means. Although he’d made many friends during his travels as a seminarian and minister, he was by no means famous or esteemed. He was just a man going west because he heard something unusual was taking place out there and he felt drawn to be part of it.

After he got to L.A., he quickly joined a home prayer meeting that met in the city’s working class neighborhood. From the first, Seymour sensed an extraordinary event was taking shape. People with no formal training were sharing scripture and uniting in deep prayer. Their hearts blazed with conviction that God wanted to do great things. They felt a huge shift was coming and knew they would be crucial to it. In short, their earthly credentials weren’t exceptional. But their spiritual IQs were off the charts. And, unlike the upper-class society that haughtily dismissed them, they were undaunted by racial, class, gender, and religious diversity. People of every color and identity began to crowd the Bonnie Brae cottage. Soon they had to find another place to pray.

Someone recalled an old church on the rougher side of town that had been turned into a stable. It sat on Azusa Street, a narrow lane few people knew by name. With Seymour serving as their leader, they moved prayer meetings there and no sooner did they get settled than a full-on phenomenon exploded. A “second Pentecost” fell on the place and people began to worship in ways that echoed the first Pentecost in Acts. There were prophecies and visions. People were unable to stand upright in the divine presence that saturated the atmosphere. And many of them spoke in unknown tongues, ecstatically receiving the gift of a miraculously provided language of prayer, praise, and soul-stirring intercession.

There was an irony that couldn’t be ignored: a faith that began 2000 years ago in a borrowed stable had found renewal in another barn 7500 miles from Bethlehem.

The keepers of conventional Christianity were outraged at what they heard and saw at Azusa Street. It was too unseemly—especially the mixing of races and classes and genders and ethnicities. Spanish-speaking folks were rejoicing alongside English-speaking folks. Men and women, clergy and laity were preaching and prophesying. Black men caught white women who toppled backward when they “slain” in the Spirit. All of it made for sensational newspaper copy, to the distress of the traditional churches and professional clergy, who denounced Seymour and the Azusa Revival as heresy.

In the end, Seymour stood tall. The revelations he gathered as a prophet and mystic turned modern Christianity on its head. The Pentecostal movement was born and continues to be the fastest growing form of Christian faith in the modern world.

What was Seymour all about? Why was he chosen? We’ll look into that this week as Gather continues its Lenten study series, “Into the Mystic.”

Join us this Thursday via Facebook Live at 7:30p CDT as we explore the Seymour story and its impact on contemporary faith. It will be an exciting—and unusual—story!