Monday
Psalm 100.1 “Shout for joy to the Lord of all the earth.”
Or as the old Paraphrase has it: “All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.” When the world around us is divided, menacing, and fuels foreboding for the future, go read a Psalm! This one line is a call to universal acclaim of God, for all people to acknowledge and give thanks to the Creator God, and to rejoice in the very fact of our existence under God. This isn’t a denial of the harsh realities of a world at odds with itself. It is an affirmation of faith that God did not create a world and let it go. God is still Lord of all the earth, and all its peoples.
Tuesday
Psalm 100.2 “Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.”
“Him serve with mirth his praise forth tell; come ye before Him and rejoice!” Joy, cheerfulness, mirth, joyful songs – this is the vocabulary of a faith that looks at God first, that is well aware of the problems and fears of a broken world, but insists that the first and crucial response is worship. Give God his place in the way you view the world and the way you view the world will be transformed. The seed of hope grows out of such faith; and joy is its flower. There is great wisdom in those imperatives – sing and shout for joy to the Lord. Why? Because the Lord of all the earth is faithful, and filled with mercy. Gladness is an emotion whose roots lie deep in trust and hope in God.
Wednesday
Psalm 100.3a “Know that the Lord is God.”
Now there’s a thought to carry around for a day. Several Psalms leading up to Psalm 100 make it clear there are no other gods worth worshipping. This is an imperative, a straightforward in your face command – understand, know, get it into your head and into your heart, the Lord is God, and no other! What’s more, the Lord of the whole earth is the one who is in final control, the God whose power and purposes are guided by faithful love and ever-ready mercy. Whatever else you give head space to, that truth is the one that makes your life secure whatever else is happening in the world. “Know that the Lord is God.” Not Presidents or other power-brokers, not politics or technology, not money or corporate concentrations of economic control. God. Know that the Lord is God, and you know the one truth that makes God worth worshipping and life worth living.
Thursday
Psalm 100.3a “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us and we are his.”
God has a double claim on our worship, allegiance and obedience. He made us, and we are his. But for God we would not exist; and but for God we would have neither life nor identity. He made us. That in itself is reason for all that gladness, mirth and joyful song! Not only that – we are his. We belong to God. He has made us his special possession, each one of us uniquely precious and full of potential to grow into all that God created and called us to be. In a world of such contemporary flux and uncertainty, we are assuredly held and kept by the power of God within the loving purpose of the Creator who calls us his own.
Friday
Psalm 100.3 “We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”
Feel the full force of the Psalm poet’s cumulative argument. The Lord is God. He made us. We are his. We are his people. We are the sheep of his pasture. Our safety is God’s responsibility because God has made himself responsible for us. When Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd”, he had verses like this in mind. That world out there is a dangerous place; life has inbuilt uncertainties; we cannot be fully human and not struggle at times. But, this also is true. We are his – we are his people. There is a covenant between God and those who in Christ come to know that the Lord is God. That covenant is underpinned by the faithfulness of God to all his promises in Christ. When we find ourselves in those hard places, remember – “We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.”
Saturday
Psalm 100.4
“O enter then his courts with praise,
Approach with joy his courts unto;
Praise, bless, and laud his name always,
For it is seemly so to do.”
I love this old version by William Kethe, which dates from around 1565 when it was included in the Scottish Psalter. Kethe was a Protestant Scottish minister who went into exile in Europe to escape persecution. The whole Psalm, “All people that on earth do dwell,” emerged not from a life of peace and safety, but from a world of risk, danger and cost. And yet it sparkles with the vocabulary of faith triumphant – singing with cheerful voice, approaching God with joy, knowing God is our maker and faithful shepherd. In verse 4, in case you miss the two dominant chords of thanksgiving and praise, they are repeated in a classic piece of poetic parallelism. Even in the place of exile and danger, those tough, hard to navigate places in our lives, thanks and praise sound out faith’s defiant trust that no matter what, the Lord is God.” This we know!
Sunday
Psalm 100.5
For why? The Lord our God is good,
His mercies are forever sure.
His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.
Isn’t that two word question just brilliant? And that long threefold answer. How do we know that God is good? Here’s why! i) ‘His mercies are forever sure’; whatever else falls apart and is not dependable, God’s mercies are never exhausted. ii) ‘His truth at all times firmly stood’; the truth of who God is guarantees all of his promises, and the full integrity of his purposes – whatever else falls, these truths firmly stand as permanent witness because underwritten by the very being of God. Iii) ‘And shall from age to age endure’; our own lives are short, our timespan the blink of an eye beholding eternity. But God made us, we are his, we rest upon the faithful mercy of God. “For why? The Lord our God is good.” And that is surely enough.
(The anchor sits on the hill overlooking Findochty harbour, a place we have had many holidays, and a place with a rich tradition and variety of Christian witness.)
Leave a Reply