Easter Wednesday

The journey through the Psalms is complete. It ended on the plane ride on the return flight from Oklahoma City and the "Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace" Conference. After two whirlwind days of speaking with the church's emerging voice about gun violence, I read/walked through the last 25 psalms to soak in all my recent experiences. I read the Ascent Psalms that the pilgrims sang as they climbed the final hill to the gates of Jerusalem. I stood at my own gates of the City of God when Holy Week began. Martin Smith when he was a brother at the Society of St. John the Evangelist wrote that Lent was trying to drink from a waterfall with a tiny cup. My Lent Journey of the Psalms was my waterfall but God filled the tiny cup I had by guiding me each day to stand on a ledge by a different place of the thundering water. When the torrent of the rushing baptismal river began in Holy Week, at least my feet and clothes were already wet with the spray of God and I was ready. Now it is Easter Wednesday. Time is lay in warmth of the light God created, to feel the freshness of my skin that mirrors the freshness of my soul, to touch the cold rocks of my hardened places of my heart warming to the heat surge of new life around me, and, to listen to the rush of the water knowing that is there to carry me to a new life with God.

In the Fourth Week of Lent, Psalms 99 through 102

Probably because I memorized Psalm 100 in Sunday School, I thought all psalms should be like this one. Reading through the psalms, they certainly are not tilted towards the exuberance found in Psalm 100. Reading to this point in the psalter lead me to wonder, how can so many psalms be devoted to the fear and struggle of life? In Sunday School it is appropriate to learn that all the earth worships that Lord and that 'his steadfast love endures forever.' Most likely it is not until later in life that we learn that all the earth struggles. That lesson may not come to us until it is our own struggle that grabs hold of our feet and we feel we cannot break free no matter how hard we try to run. Reading through the psalms I experienced in a comforting way that wrestling with life and wrestling with God is sanctified in our prayers, our pleas, and our worship.