Sunday, October 2, 2011

Notes to the Lord: Praise, Flocks and Idols



Psalm 95

Come, let's shout praises to God, raise the roof for the Rock who saved us! Let's march into his presence singing praises, lifting the rafters with our hymns!


Father--Everyday is a call to worship. Everyday is an opportunity to lift the roof in praise for what you have done. I am surrounded on all sides by the blessings of your creation, and yet I can miss it so easily.

3-5 And why? Because God is the best,
High King over all the gods.
In one hand he holds deep caves and caverns,
in the other hand grasps the high mountains.


Father--There is no where that I can go that you are not already there and watching over it...you hold them in your hands. The beautiful and the ugly are all a part of your creative diversity...poripine and mountain peaks 

He made Ocean—he owns it!
His hands sculpted Earth!
6-7 So come, let us worship: bow before him,
on your knees before God, who made us!
Oh yes, he's our God,
and we're the people he pastures, the flock he feeds.


Father--I am part of your flock. You own everything that surrounds me. I have no worries about a place to be...this is your creation in the first place. In looking at the place that I find myself sometimes I wonder if you are here. When I feel lost and alone on the journey, I am never in a place that you do not know intimately from the inside out. When I feel as if I am an outsider, it is time for worship.

7-11 Drop everything and listen, listen as he speaks:
"Don't turn a deaf ear as in the Bitter Uprising,
As on the day of the Wilderness Test,
when your ancestors turned and put me to the test.


The early church read this psalm as referring to Messiah. There is urgency in the following at times.Here you are speaking Father.  The reference is to the golden calf incident in the wilderness when your people worship at the feet of an idol.  The same people who had seen the Red Sea part found themselves at the feet of a golden calf that they had made from the gold plundered from Egypt.  There is irony and sadness in the incident.

I would like to think that idol worship is not anything that I have ever done...that I am somehow more sophisticated than  to do something that silly. The early church saw the similarities that I would like to overlook and distance from. Whenever I don't listen to your call, I am at the feet of a golden calf and don't even know it.

For forty years they watched me at work among them,
as over and over they tried my patience.
And I was provoked—oh, was I provoked!

'Can't they keep their minds on God for five minutes?
Do they simply refuse to walk down my road?'
Exasperated, I exploded,
'They'll never get where they're headed,
never be able to sit down and rest.'"

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