“I Will Call to Remembrance My Song in the Night”

The psalmist, Asaph, finds himself in a night-time crucible. God has withdrawn. But Asaph, while treading deep waters, shows us a pattern, an ancient rhythm:

I will call to remembrance my song: and in the night I commune with mine own heart, and search out my spirits. Psalm 77:6

The rhythm begins with complaint and ascends in song. David’s psalms illustrate this pattern frequently, but here Asaph, too, unapologetically pours out his complaint. It sounds something like this:

What’s wrong with me, God?!

And then, with even more gut-level honesty:

What’s wrong with You, God?!

But Asaph doesn’t stop there. Like the pattern showed often by David, he transitions to take a Deep Breath of Remember. A breath so deep, it takes the rest of Psalm 76 and the entirety of Psalm 77 to fully rehearse the ancient works and wonders God has accomplished for His people. It’s a powerful and beautiful song bursting from a heart intent on glorifying God.

Asaph’s song punches through the thick, foggy layer of his current circumstances filled with a multitude of voices demanding his attention and allegiance. His choice, in essence, means he must forget the moment in order to remember the moment rightly. Remembering realigns his loves!

Do you have a song in the night? A song that abandons the grip of disordered, misplaced loves and dreams of a selfish “good life?” A song in which you discover you can glorify God and enjoy Him forever?[1]

Consider these few snippets of Asaph’s song of remembrance:

Who is so great a God as our God?

The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: the depths were also troubled.

Thy way is in the sea, and thy paths in the great waters: and thy footsteps are not known.

As you begin to craft your own personal song in the night, consider Who it is you’re singing to. Listen to Asaph’s contemporary singer, David, as he turns his complaint to a song of remembrance:

The Lord,

• My strength
• Stony rock
• Defense
• Savior
• My God
• Might
• Trust
• Buckler
• Horn of salvation
• Refuge
• Worthy to be praised
• Show’s lovingkindness and mercy.

[1] Taken from Westminster Catechism Question #1: What is the chief end of man?

Deep Breath of Remember – Barnyard Liturgy (Part 2)

Through gospel-driven liturgy, our worship can calibrate our hearts.  Information won’t do that.  Christian worship is designed to bend our hearts back toward God.  We can’t think our way out of wrong desires.  Rather than being an expressive endeavor, God calling us to worship invites us into a space where He gets ahold of us and re-shapes our fundamental loves.  Historic Christian worship invites us into the gospel story anew.  We gather around the Word and the Table to re-inhabit the gospel which converts our imagination in ways we may not be aware of.  This spiritual transformation is our sanctification.

We’re image-bearers called to tend God’s flourishing world, much like from the story in Genesis 1.  Our liturgies within our work environments shape us.  They impart a vision of how we define the “good life.”  There are many rival liturgies trying to capture us with a picture of what we want to live toward.  We need new liturgies, new habits, new routines and rhythms to bridge the gap between what we think of as our “good life” and what we actually do.[1] http://trinitybozeman.org/sundays/sermons/?sermon_id=203

My work environment happens to be labor on a dairy.  As my love for God’s liturgy practiced on Sunday’s grows, and as I discover my qualification for responding to His call to worship is to feel my need for Him, I find that I profoundly feel that need the other days of the week.  So, welcome to my version of Barnyard Liturgy.   Like you, my work is partly satisfying, permeated with unexpected joys, and mostly a crucible for the shaping of my identity.  I share my stories with the hope that you will grow in awareness of your liturgies practiced in a cubicle, tending the kids, selling real estate, caring for the elderly, teaching at the University.  My hope is that we will grow toward having our identity shaped in God and God alone.

[1] These thoughts provided by James K. A. Smith, Christ and Culture Lectures, “You Are What You Love.”

If I Were Abednego

Why me?

Crisis descends.

Why me?

Fires stoked thrice.

Why me?

Fires stoked thrice, twice.

Sheer terror.

Why me?

Such injustice!

Such crucible tries my weary faith.

Fires stoked thrice, twice, plus one.

Why me?!

Yet, what binds me, burns.

Eye scales drop as ashes,

And I see.

I see Another.

Unsinged, I gasp!

Unhinged, I grasp

The one alongside.

Saving me through,

Not from,

The furnace.

My complaint shifts to query,

Why YOU?!

 

(Inspired by Pastor Bryan Clark, sermon, Trial By Fire, Daniel 3:13-30)