47:1 Clap your hands, all you peoples; shout to God with loud songs of joy.
47:2 For the LORD, the Most High, is awesome, a great king over all the earth.
47:3 He subdued peoples under us, and nations under our feet.
47:4 He chose our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob whom he loves. Selah
47:5 God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet.
47:6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.
47:7 For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm.
47:8 God is king over the nations; God sits on his holy throne.
47:9 The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the
shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted.
Now I realized why I am the only one posting this week around here. I was working on the four texts for Ascension Thursday while every one else gather on the Sunday's text. No wonder things have been so quiet here. This is what happened when you don're really preach the lectionary but only come here for daily devotion. At first I was tempted to move to the other forum as everyone else was there. But perhaps it is best for me to stay here in quiet reflection.
Think of Desperate Preacher's Site as these rooms with the sacred-text of the week hanging on the walls and the pastors and preachers congregated together to examine the text together and to discuss. I am ending up in a little obscure corner of this cyberspace for the last few days, reflecting on the great commission and the power of the Holy Spirit.
But in real life, I have been fight a lot of battle of the mind lately. I am preparing for a Questions and Answers session with the young people this Saturday, struggling to find my own position between faith and reason, science and mystic, the Work of God and the Word of God. In my study for preaching, I found my self torn between the same tension of the Authority of the Word and the Authenticity of Life. (Perhaps the heart of incarnational preaching I desire, is the incomprehensible idea of Word become Flesh). Then in my church history study, I am approaching the great secular undersiege in the late 19th century Enlightenment period where the four forces of Evolutionism, Freudian Neuro-Psychological Religious-developmentalism, Social-Athropological Religious-developmentalism, and Bibilical Criticism all converged on the phenomenon of faith. Needless to say, these plausible ideas shake up my soul to the core.
As I driving home last night, I found myself repeating the prayer of "Oh God, help me! Oh God, help me!" In a flash of time, God reminded me of Peter walking on water. There's the waves of secular reasonings crashing on me, there's the wind of despairs blowing everything around me, and there's darkness in my soul, preventing me from seeing where Jesus is in my life. In the midst of all that, what else can Peter say, but "Oh God, Help me!"
(Here is a perfect chance for a secularist to take a potshot at me, for clinging to my own meta narrative of the faith, because my mind had been preconditioned to do so. It also a chance for a fundametalist to show pity of how little faith I have in facing the oppositions of the world). In a way, I missed where I have been. If you are walking through a narrow mountain passage way, how many options you would have to get lost? For both sides of you were the high mountain walls. Your options were simply forward or backward. But once you get to the vast prarie land, you have many more options to get lost.
I was glad to be able to spend some times with this Psalm today. Tod Bolsinger once told me, "Remember if the Psalmist say 'Praise the Lord' it meant that the people wasn't praising at the moment".
So here in this Psalm, the sons of Korah lead people in singing praises to God here. Wherever we are, whatever we might be feeling, the Psalmist wanted us to SHOUT to God with LOUD SONGS of JOY! Why? Because while my perceptions may plague me with trouble, the reality is that the Most High God reigns over all, and I am belong to Him, and He loves me. The past tense of "subdued" and "chose" somehow suggested that victory had already accomplished (and rightly so for the time, Korah's clan was temple musician for David).
The theme of God our King is repeated multiple times in this Psalm. He is my King, our King, but also King of all the earth and over the nations. Believe it or not, none of the sieges of the Enlightenment caught God by surprise. It may caught me by surprise for I wasn't ready for it. But in the long run, He will steer the course of history and shape it to what he want!
My faith need to be larger! Oh God, help me!
Coho, Midway City.
