Skip to main content

Reintroduce Yourself


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?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more