Daily Devotion - 2/05/09

The Lord is with us!

Psalm 92 come to us with the title that it has been written to be sung on the Sabbath. From the first lines of the psalm we get a good sense of its purpose:

It is good to praise the LORD 
       and make music to your name, O Most High,
to proclaim your love in the morning ?       and your faithfulness at night,
to the music of the ten-stringed lyre ?       and the melody of the harp.

Unlike the laments and penitential psalms, Psalm 92 is a song written for the public worship of God through the singing of praise.  While in the minority, such psalms are vital to our own time of both public and private prayer because praise fills an important set of roles in our journey to come into relationship with a God that is both completely other in His divinity and tantalizingly familiar in His humanity through the person of Christ.

The first role of praise is to remind us that God is neither far away and impersonal nor just like us and some sort of "best buddy" whom we might hang out with for a few days.  In praise, we work towards an understanding that God is closer to us that we can possibly imagine through His indwelling Spirit that inhabits our praise and that He alone is holy.

The second role of praise to to take the focus off of ourselves.  While much has been written about how our culture is probably the most individualistic in all of human history, the real truth is that we're all pretty self-centered when it comes right down to it.  We tend to view this world as a stage for our own performance and everything and everyone else in it as either props or supporting actors.  What praise does is reminds us that the while the grand story does have a central figure, He is not us and He does not have our simple or specific goals in mind when writing that story.  That's not to say that we don't have a role in the grand story or that we don't have stories of our own that are being written and told in the lives we live but that our stories have much less meaning and coherence when they aren't connected to His story of love and faithfulness.

Finally, the third role of praise I want to remind you of is that the act of praise in worship helps us to remember the plot of the story.  One of the things I've been studying is the story of the Exodus and the powerful echoes of that narrative found all throughout Scripture.  One of the hardest things about the story is how the Israelites seem to lose the plot of the story.  Over and over we hear them grumbling and complaining after God has rescued and redeemed them from slavery in Egypt.  I think that we do the exact some thing.  I can't tell you the number of times I've logged onto facebook and read the status lines of students who are complaining about having to go to class, do homework or just learn.  These are students who have lost the plot.

I recall a time in my first year of graduate school.  A bunch of us rookies where hanging out in the big community office we call "The Bullpen" and we were bemoaning the injustices of graduate school.  As we were going on about how unfair it all seemed to be one of my fellow students, Phillipe who was from France, quietly said that he was thanking to be able to sit there and complain.  In his humble way, he said that he was glad to be in school, studying something he loved and pursuing his dreams even if the work was hard instead of working a hard manual labor job or living in a box on the streets somewhere.  As you might imagine, it pretty much ended the pity party.  For me, it reminded me of the plot of the story God was having me live out at that time.  In time I would come to praise God for the opportunity to live in a country that provided the opportunities that I had.

So, I encourage you to take time each day to praise God.  Reconnect with the plot by looking at something and Someone bigger than yourself.

Grace and Peace.

In Him,

Chad

Psalm 92

A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day.

It is good to praise the LORD 
      and make music to Your name, O Most High,
to proclaim Your love in the morning 
      and Your faithfulness at night,

to the music of the ten-stringed lyre 
      and the melody of the harp.

For You make me glad by Your deeds, O LORD; 
      I sing for joy at the works of Your hands.

How great are Your works, O LORD, 
      how profound Your thoughts!

The senseless man does not know, 
      fools do not understand,

that though the wicked spring up like grass 
      and all evildoers flourish, 
      they will be forever destroyed.

But You, O LORD, are exalted forever.

For surely Your enemies, O LORD, 
      surely Your enemies will perish; 
      all evildoers will be scattered.

You have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox; 
      fine oils have been poured upon me.

My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries; 
      my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, 
      they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;

planted in the house of the LORD, 
      they will flourish in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit in old age, 
      they will stay fresh and green,

proclaiming, "The LORD is upright; 
      he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."