Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among
the nations what he has done. (Psalm 105:1)
Giving
thanks isn't done in isolation. It's part of a whole life. Other parts include
supplication (calling on his name) and witnessing (making known...what he has
done.) In this passage, it's listed as
the first task. In my modern, American mind, that seems out of place. You ask
for something and get it, then you thank the giver for it and go tell
everyone about the neat thing you got and (maybe) about who gave it to you. At
best, you say "please and thank you," but the request still precedes
the gratitude. It doesn't make sense to thank someone before you've even asked
him to do anything.
It
also doesn't make sense to start the day at sunset instead of sunrise, but
that's how God directed it to be done in ancient Israel. It doesn't make sense
that your day begins with a meal and time with family and sleep and only when
the day is about half way over (depending on the time of year) starting to
work. It doesn't make sense...or does it? Imagine ordering your day in such a
way that you know that before you have a chance to get to work on the day's
events, you have at least 8 hours in which God is going to work, and all you
can really do is either lay away worrying about it or trust Him and get a good night's rest. Imagine ordering
your day in such a way that going to bed looks forward to the rest of the day
and its possibilities, instead of looking back on what happened.
Similarly,
it does make sense to start with "Thank you." When you introduce a
speaker (or anyone else), you are supposed to tell the audience what the person
has done that makes it appropriate for
that person to speak about the subject. Why wouldn't it be wise, then, to
reintroduce ourselves to the God on whom we're going to depend for something by
thanking Him for what He has done before?
Wouldn't that set us up to rest and allow Him to work?
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