The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Pastor Rebecca Graham, First United Lutheran Church In times of great distress, the ancient Israelites sang songs, laments, prayers, hopes all to God. They would describe their distress, their concerns, their worries to God in ways that they hoped that God would understand and deliver them from the negative, bless them with more of the positive, and all in all, show them that God has not deserted their lives. These songs are gathered together in the books of Psalms, a hymn book of ancient Israel. Today we see the psalms as a collection of poems, prayers, and laments. But we don't often identify with their struggle, with their pain, with their hope for a better life. And today, we look at the world around us, and we cry out to God, but don't know the words. We are frightened, and in our fear, we pull away from others; but this action, alone, isolated us. We, as humans, are communal creatures. We live in community, together, and it is only when we can come together as a community, as a people, that we can begin to find the hope that God has given us. He has given us each other. We can come together at community social events; we can come together at our places of worship. We come together as women, and as men, as the whole people of God, and together we can weather this time of uncertainty. Together we can give strength to each other, encouragement to each other. Together we can sing the laments, the praises, the hymns that come from our hearts, and the psalms that describe our situation to God, so that we can, together, praise God for giving us others on whom we can lean in this time of uncertainty. The psalmist says, "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." (Ps. 42:5) The author of the psalm, too, looks for the hope that God gives to each and every one of us; hope that helps us to weather these times of uncertainty, the hope that is still in our hearts, although the griefs of the day try to overwhelm us. He goes on to say, "By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me - a prayer to the God of my life." (vs 7) Even in the midst of our uncertainty and fear, we can find the love of God filling us and giving us hope to see into the future, together, as a community.
