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Devotions for the Church Year

Light in the World

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Epiphany

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.” Ephesians 5:8-10

There are caves in the world that are so deep they haven’t yet been fully discovered. One of those is Krubera Cave, located in a mountain range that runs north of the country of Turkey. The opening to this cave is above the tree line but stretches deep into the earth. Explorers have gone as far as seven thousand feet, but Krubera Cave is believed to have still more chambers that stretch farther into cold, humid, pitch-black labyrinths.

The interior of this cave is eternal darkness where sunlight never reaches. For explorers, the depths of this cave offer extreme isolation. The darkness separates them from the world on the earth’s surface. They can’t see anything or even each other without artificial light sources such as headlamps or floodlights.

In the darkness there is disorientation. Without the natural light cycles, telling time is impossible. A sense of direction or knowing where they are is difficult. Explorers use their own camps as landmarks in this underground wilderness.

Life forms in the abyss of darkness include spiders and beetles that have adapted so they are born without eyes. They have gone blind because there is no need to see. In the depths of a cave, constant darkness brings isolation, disorientation, and blindness. This is the world, spiritually, when no light shines.

Paul says, “For you were once in darkness.” The way he writes this implies a life change. It refers to the past. The life being lived now is not the one lived a few years ago. Something happened to the individuals who belong to this congregation in Ephesus. But before that transformation came about, they were living in darkness.

This isn’t the physical darkness of a cave, but of spiritual darkness. He uses the image of darkness as a metaphor for spiritual realities. They were living in ignorance and blindness, in falsehood, and with a sense of being lost. But at some point, the light of Christ shined on them and changed their hearts.

Genuine, transformation happens when we have the Holy Spirit living in us. He is the one who chases the darkness away and establishes in us the shining light of Christian goodness, righteousness, and truth. The brighter our lives shine with these qualities, the more accurate our reflection of Jesus will be.

We expose him and make him known for what he is really like. Our lives reveal what has been hidden, and then Christ’s nature is made to appear. In a cave, when explorers shine their floodlights into those deep caverns, the colors of the rocks and the beauty of the mineral deposits, the draperies and the columns of the rock formations, are revealed. They have always existed but no one sees them until they come into a shaft of light.

During this season of Epiphany, we pay attention to Christ’s arrival as the light of the world. Epiphany is a season of enlightenment when what has been hidden is made known.

Take heart for Christ is near. He is shining in you and through you in ways you may not even realize. He is your source of light, and he is the brilliance that shows himself to us asks us to make him known to others. The one who declares, “I am the light of the world,” says to us, “You are the light of the world.”

History and Research

History and Research Blog Post #5

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Koffie tijd

The Dutch are coffee drinkers. This taste wasn’t acquired when they settled in America, but extends back to Europe, to the late 1600’s. By the year 1700, the Dutch were the largest suppliers of coffee in Europe. Dutch merchants sourced beans from Yemen and planted them in Indonesia and India. These merchants soon discovered the economic value in raising and harvesting coffee, so they began importing it to the Netherlands. The Dutch also influenced the development of coffee plantations in South and Central America.

Coffee was first enjoyed only by the elite wealthy class as a luxury. Elegant coffee houses served coffee, tea, chocolate, and other imported treats. As coffee became more affordable, it grew in popularity among the rest of the population. Coffee has become a social beverage, central to Dutch culture.

To order a beverage and food for a proper Dutch koffie tijd, or coffee time, we must first learn some vocabulary.

To order a small beverage, you would ask for a kopje, or a cup. To order a larger one, you would request a mok, or a mug.

If you prefer a latte with milk, you would order koffie verkeerd. But if you wish to drink black coffee that is strong an flavorful, you would request normal coffee, or just koffie. You could also emphasize that you want your coffee without milk, and you want to drink it black, so then you would order zwarte koffie.

If you would like something to eat with your coffee, you could choose from appelbak (apple pastry), ontbijtkoek (breakfast cake), boterkoek (butter cake), vlaai (fruit tart), or poffertjes (small, fluffy pancakes).

In the Netherlands, specialty shops serve cold drip coffee even though it requires special glass equipment and makes small batches. The most common style of coffee is made with hot water filtered through coffee grounds and drained into a large pot.

Koffie tijd occurs at specific times throughout the day, usually at 10:00 a.m. and again at 3:00 p.m. This tradition is a short pause in the day for rest, socializing, and hospitality. These times line up with the breaks we took in the day on the farm. Sometimes coffeetime was closer to 9:30 in the morning, depending on how long choring took. The afternoon coffeetime might stretch to 4:00 so that kids coming home from school could participate. This was especially the case if someone had a birthday to celebrate. Then the menu would definitely include cake as well as ice cream.

The world’s largest coffee roaster is Jacobs Douwe Egberts.

The largest coffee auction is The Dutch Coffee Auction.

I relied on the website weaverscoffee.com for much of the information in this blog post.

Devotions for the Church Year

Kingly Heritage

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An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Matthew 2:13, 19

In verse 13 of Matthew chapter 2, an angel appeared to Joseph with the message of escape to Egypt. Later, in verse 19, an angel gives him the message to return to the land of Israel. The angel’s words convey protection while also placing a call on Joseph’s life. He is in a bit of a dilemma, really. He wants to be a husband to Mary and a father to Jesus, supporting them and providing for them. And yet, fatherhood to this sort of child asks him to play the part of a fugitive. He must flee from his home, travel under the cover of night, and hide in a foreign country.

It’s all a part of God’s plan, and Joseph realized that. He accepted the reality that he must release his hold on his own plans in order to protect Jesus. Joseph is a key player in the intricacies of the Christmas story as it unfolded in those early days of Jesus’ life. Without Joseph’s willingness to heed the angel’s instructions, his wife and child would have been exposed to serious danger. God’s plan would have been interrupted, and the path to salvation would have been hindered.

Joseph may not have been aware of so much weight resting on his urgent decisions, but he was at least mindful of the prophecies heralding the coming Messiah. Joseph seems to be a quiet man who would not stand out in a crowd. He was a small town boy, a carpenter, someone who worked with his hands. Drawing attention to himself wasn’t part of his character. But devotion to God certainly was. Joseph is listed in the first chapter of Matthew as part of Jesus’ genealogy. He is a descendant of King David which means he had royalty in his heritage. Growing up in his family, he may have heard the stories as they were passed down about the anointing of David as a young man and his call to ascend to the throne.

Woven into Joseph’s experience and his identity was a sense of dignity and majesty. Even though he earned a living doing the ordinary work of building and constructing, he possessed in his lineage the renown and the splendor of kings. This baby boy that he would raise was a king, too. Born of the lineage of Israel’s King David, this child had for his own father the king of heaven. He was the one who would bring the peace and the order, the hope and the power of the Kingdom of God.

But before any of that could happen, this baby king’s very survival depended on Joseph. As Jesus’ earthly father, he must follow the orders of the heavenly father as delivered to him through the angel. The way ahead held danger. It held risk, and it mattered very much in God’s larger plan.

In the Christmas story, Joseph appears understated. He stands quietly by as the shepherds worship the new baby, and the wise men from the east offer him gifts. Joseph listens to the angel and does what is said without any hesitation or complaint. He comes across as a background character while Mary, the baby, and so many others receive all the attention. And yet, Joseph is crucial to the beginning of Jesus’ life, and the development of the entire salvation story. His prompt obedience actively brought about a wondrous plan that began in Jesus’ childhood, and continues through history, reaching us even today.

Joseph’s life shines with an unshakable trust in God. He listened and he followed through unusual and even contradictory situations. His marriage, his occupation, his parenting, and even his home address in Galilee was surrendered to the will and the plans of God. While the Christmas story dances around him with sparkle and glad tidings, Joseph stands square in the middle of it with unwavering devotion, unshakable trust, and flawless obedience. Steadfastness and faithfulness are as much a part of Christmas as are peace and hope and joy. It’s a fitting and complete pageantry to welcome to earth the king of kings. He is fathered by both God the father who has established his throne in heaven, and whose kingdom rules over all, and by Joseph, the descendant of David who answers the call to surrender and sacrifice.

History and Research

History and Research Blog post #4

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The Tuttles of 1847 Iowa

Lake Prairie Township, the location of the town of Pella in Southern Iowa, has a pioneer story of its own. The main characters in this story are Thomas and Nancy Tuttle. Along with several other families in the township, they sold their land to the Dutch when the colony arrived in the summer of 1847.

In researching the Tuttle couple, I’ve concluded that they were quiet farmers who worked the land with hopes of establishing a farm. Their reasons for selling out remain a mystery, but my imagination has created all sorts of possibilities. Maybe they had family inviting them to move or maybe they had encountered drought or disease or insects. Maybe the prices weren’t what they hoped, or maybe the work of farming was harder than they expected.

Thomas and Nancy traveled to Lake Prairie Township from Fairfield. They were married in Fairfield in 1842, and then moved farther west in 1843. History books claim they were among the first to settle this area of the state with their closest neighbor living twenty miles away.

Nancy was twenty-five years old when she and her husband started farming. She’d been born in Virginia in 1822 and gradually moved west with her family until meeting Thomas. He was quite a bit older than Nancy since he was thirty-five when he married her, and forty years old at the time he sold his farm to the Dutch.

I’ve wondered if perhaps he was married previously and Nancy was his second wife. Little information exists on his life prior to his marriage to Nancy, so I haven’t been able to learn about the people he might have known. Thomas was Canadian but his parents were citizens of the United States. With origins in Canada, Thomas apparently drifted south with his family while Nancy’s drifted west, eventually bringing them both to Iowa.

Two years after the Tuttles arrived on the newly opened prairie, Marion County was organized. This took place in 1845, and Iowa became a state one year later in 1846. Marion County was formed from the western portion of Mahaksa County. The town of Knoxville, which serves as the county seat, was founded in 1845, and then became incorporated ten years later.

Other settlers listed in Pella and Marion County history books include Green T. Clark and his wife Nancy, John B. Hamilton and Robert Hamilton, Wellington and Levi Nossaman and their wives and children, and William and Elizabeth Welch and their children.

Thomas and Nancy built a cabin of walnut on the edge of a patch of timber. The land was believed to be easier to work nearer to a treed area, so it makes sense that Thomas would want to put his farm there. The Tuttle cabin was the location of the sale of land to the Dutch. Dominee Scholte and a land committee of five or six other men arrived at the Tuttle farm late in July, led there by Baptist minister Moses Post.

Scholte bought the land and buildings from the Tuttles as well as from several other families. Scholte used the Tuttle cabin as his own accommodations while the town of Pella was getting settled and while he waited for his own home to be built.

This cabin still stands, and it is located just a couple blocks north of Pella’s downtown square. A sidewalk connects it to Sunken Garden Park, and along the sidewalk are displays with information on them about the Tuttles and the Dutch settlement in Marion County.

Records show that the Tuttles moved farther west and farmed in the area of what is now Prairie City. The couple never had any children. A local historian recently told me that Thomas and Nancy are buried in Illinois. This pioneer couple would have remained completely unknown except for their connection to Dominee Scholte. They fell under the spotlight for that brief era in their lives and then faded from the attention of history.

My speculations about them might be inaccurate, and farming may not have been too difficult of work or disappointing in profit. Perhaps their willingness to sell came from a similar desire to that of Charles Ingalls. They might have wanted to be the first to settle in undisturbed land, and to see it and know it before railroads or fences or powerlines broke it up. Their life and their experience as the earliest farmers in Iowa help us understand the authentic pioneer experience.

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The Hope of Forgiveness

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Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all His benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases …The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love…He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Psalm 103:2, 3, 8, 10.

Psalm 103 is the best picture we have of what God is really like. Have you ever been in a situation when you knew you needed help? In order to get that help, you must inconvenience someone who is already busy. Asking them to do something for you will make more work for them and could even make them angry. You hold your breath, and prepare for conflict.

But when you ask, the person is happy to help you. It’s like they have been waiting for you to come to them. They show you favor and go above and beyond to meet your need and to support you.

This is what is happening in Psalm 103. The poet, who is King David, realizes he needs help. He has sin that he wants to have forgiven. He has sickness he would like to have healed. He feels oppressed and in need of justice. He’s in a situation that he can’t get out of on his own.

He believes that God has every right to be angry with him, to accuse him of wrong, and to repay him with a form of revenge. But God didn’t do that to him. Instead of anger, blame, and malice, David received forgiveness, healing, and mercy. David fully realizes that God did not treat him as he deserved. God shows compassion. He is slow to get angry, and offers His love instead.

This psalm is David remembering God’s great and undeserved goodness to him. “Praise the Lord, O my soul.” God could have rejected me and condemned me. But instead he healed me and forgave me. “Don’t forget, O my soul, what a loving and gracious father you have.” David knows he deserves much worse than what God gave him, and he is praising God for being so good.

Charles Spurgeon calls this psalm an entire Bible all in itself, and that it can stand as its own hymnbook. This is because it gives voice to the thankfulness of sinners that the Lord is a God of mercy and grace. It recites what Israel learned about the ways of God. The Lord has not dealt with them according to their sin.

The psalm is a remembering of God’s nature. The attribute of God’s steadfast love is repeated as the theme. Verses 8 through 12 are a quotation from Exodus where God makes a proclamation of his own name and character to Moses when the Israelites in the wilderness had committed the terrible sin of making and worshiping the golden calf. This passage described the Lord as a God who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. This phrase is sometimes called one of the most important theological statements in the Bible.

The proclamation’s theology is what the psalm is about, which is the Lord’s abounding steadfast love. It is so much greater and lasting than his anger at sin, and it is the hope of forgiveness.

Of a Farm Girl

The Summer Garden

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Over the years, I’ve researched the design and content of an English cottage garden. I don’t have the exact varieties of flowers in mine because the winters get so cold here. But I’ve attempted to replicate the look of informal design and many colorful flowers. I love the sense of nostalgia and romance of a charming and inviting flower garden. Working with the flowers (and my vegetable garden too) are my way to staying connected to the land, and in touch with the rhythms of planting and harvest that the various seasons offer throughout the year.

It’s been a work in progress because I’ve had to learn what deer like to eat. So aggravating! They have all the lush outdoors to choose from for food, and yet they still have to get in my flower beds!

Everything in these pictures deer will eat like it’s candy. The garden is all behind a fence five feet high. The white picket fence is ornamental, and then above it, as invisible as I could possibly make it, runs a green wire fence. Success!

I started doing full-time chaplaincy in the summer when everything was blooming and the days were long enough that I could go outside a while after I got home. Then late fall arrived followed by winter when the evenings were dark and cold and nothing was growing in the garden.

This taught me how much I rely on the beauty of the garden to restore me at the end of days spent near the hideousness of death and the moments of deep pain so many patients experience. Working in the garden is soothing and being surrounded by results of my labor is delightful.

I’m savoring each summer day of sunshine and blossom and thinking of creative ways to bring that delight indoors with me during the colder months.

Of an American

Celebrating the Fourth of July

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The Fourth of July holiday falls midsummer when everything is growing, the flowers are blooming, and the weather can be at its warmest. This year, celebrations started for me with a trip to Des Moines with my husband, oldest son, and our good friends to watch the Yankee Doodle Pops on the lawn of the capitol.

We took a picnic along so that we could enjoy our evening meal outdoors. The jazz band from Drake University provided the pre-concert entertainment. They were fabulous. Then the Des Moines Symphony started their portion of the evening with selections from a range of jazz and popular music with patriotic songs sprinkled throughout.

As they played Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, canons on a hill behind us shot off loud explosions in time to the music. Then the fireworks began in dazzling display over the Des Moines skyline. It was such a perfect way to usher in the holiday weekend, sharing in the music and the show with other Iowans on the lawn of our capitol building, and enjoying a pleasant evening outdoors with family and friends.

On the Fourth, we spent the lunch hour and most of the afternoon at the farm with my husband’s family. Toward evening, they watched the parade while I walked in it with other staff from Pella Regional. The city band concert followed by Pella’s firework display finished off the evening.

I’m mindful of the events happening in our government this weekend as well. The President traveled to Des Moines and was at the Iowa State fairgrounds while we were at the Yankee Doodle Pops. On Friday, the bill was signed by the Speaker of the House, and military planes flew over the capitol in Washington D.C. As a country, we are entering our 250th year. This is why the President came to Iowa. The celebration is starting this year, and his visit was the kick-off to the festivities.

We have much to be thankful for as Americans. I think of the people who have served and are serving in the military to defend freedom. I think of the leaders God raises up to guide, to bear the burden of decision making, and of relations with foreign countries.

I marvel at the intricacy and flexibility of American government. When it functions the way intended, it works for the common good, giving as many people a voice and a measure of power as it possibly can.

I’m grateful for the chance the Fourth gives us to wave the flag, to honor the people who serve, and to remember that we are one nation under God, as our currency says. May he continue to show his grace and long-suffering toward us as he leads us through good times as well as the difficult ones. May we have the respect for him to listen and to follow.

I love patriotic music and enjoy listening to it when the opportunity arises, so I could list many favorites here to share, but I will just choose two. Click on the titles below to listen to America the Beautiful and God Bless America. Timeless and inspiring songs to bolster our belief in our nation, and to remind us who is ultimately in charge, not just in America but in all the world.

Listen to America the Beautiful

Listen to God Bless America

Devotionals

Thirsty for God

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You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1

David wrote this Psalm in a place of solitude, a place out in the wilderness where no one was looking. He could have been his own man out there, breaking free from the requirements of the Jewish religious traditions. Or he could have thrown the largest pity party and succumbed to feelings of worthlessness and of blaming others, or of giving up.

But he didn’t do any of that. Psalm 63 gives us a glimpse into the heart and the character of a person who is the same whether he is at the temple with other worshipers, or in a lonely desert far away from the temple and the people who go there.

In verse 1, David uses the physical terrain as the image for how thirsty he is for God. He is in a wilderness, a dry and weary land where there is no water. In his commentary on this psalm, Calvin uses words like howling wasteland, wild, hideous solitude, and distracting horrors to describe this place. The Hebrew word used for it is midbar. It’s a wilderness of uninhabited land where flocks of sheep or goats are allowed to forage for grass and vegetation. It’s a place where survival has no guarantee. Everyone–man and animals–are doing all they know how just to stay alive.

David uses this picture to confess his desperate need for God’s presence. His soul thirsts for God. His whole being longs for God. It’s like he’s saying his very person is like this parched wasteland waiting and pining for the replenishing waters of God’s presence. He feels as though God is absent and he knows he won’t survive unless God returns.

Verses 2 through 5 tell us that David has had rich and satisfying experiences of God in the past. He has been to the holy place, to the sanctuary, where God made himself known to his people. David has been overwhelmed by God’s power and glory. He has felt God’s love. It is better to him than life. Only God can satisfy him. David chooses to sing and to praise God, even while he is in the desert alone, isolated and hunted.

In verses 6 through 9, David remembers God and his protection at night on his bed, whatever that bed might have been when sleeping outdoors. The night, in the darkness, is when he felt the most vulnerable and unprotected. In the night is when the fears came. But he turned his mind to God and found peace in his memories of how God had helped him in the midst of his troubles. God’s right hand is the power that will assist him in overcoming his enemy.

At the end of the psalm, in verses 9 to 12, David is fully aware that he has an enemy who wants to kill him. But he stays confident in the moral providence of the love and power of God. The enemy is intent on destroying David, but they will meet their own violent end.

The situation of this psalm is a conflict that has been forced upon him, and it will be resolved only by one person being victorious, and one person getting defeated.

David rejoices in God, He seeks God’s help in this situation. He desires God’s presence in the crisis and remembers the clear experience of God’s power and glory in the sanctuary. God doesn’t change. He had previously satisfied David’s longing soul, and would surely do so now. He will still reveal his power, glory, and love–even in the desert–and will receive praise for it.

The whole psalter is a prayer book–or rather–a soul book that represents God and the life we can have with him. The psalms embrace the wide experience and insight of the community of faith. So we have a great variety of hymns of praise, lament, and thanksgiving, songs that recall God’s active presence in Israel’s history, songs rooted in prophetic wisdom teaching, songs of repentance and trust, songs about God’s rule, and songs of longing and hope and irrepressible joy. Martin Luther calls the psalms the “Bible in miniature.” That’s why he advises praying all of them.

The psalms change us. They form our character as we allow them to sink deep into our hearts.

When you are in those exposed, fearful places like David was, what do you do? Do you meditate on God and remember your experiences of his power and glory? Do you praise him or long for him? Or do you let your fears get the best of you and succumb to blame or feelings of worthlessness that make you want to give up?

We learn from David right away in verse one to claim God as our own. You, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you. The thirst for God is really where our devotion to God and our confidence in him starts. We have to want what he has to offer. We have to decide that he is worth the pursuit.

History and Research

History and Research Blog Post #3

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Psalmody for Calvinist Worship

To discuss the use of the psalter for worship in Dutch churches of the Netherlands, we must first take a look at some history of the country. The Reformation first arrived in the Netherlands around 1530 because a variety of dissenting Protestant sects were developing. Among these were followers of John Calvin, known as Calvinists.

During 1550-90, the Netherlands was ruled by Spain under the Catholic King, Philip II. He enforced anti-Protestant policies and gave power to local magistrates to detect and destroy these heretics because they were viewed as threats to the royal government. This sort of persecution, along with rising taxes and frustration with Spanish rule, led to one hundred years of violence, destruction, and death, with religion as the primary reason.

In 1648, war ended, and a Protestant Dutch Republic was formed. This Republic included only seven of the provinces of the Netherlands. The other provinces of North Brabant and Limburg remained a Roman Catholic area, and it was goverened by the States-General.

The main religion of the Dutch Republic was Calvinism, which was the theological tradition of John Calvin. The Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk) adopted his order and style for worship, including psalm singing. Calvin was French, and he arrived in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1536. Soon he discovered that there was no congregational singing in the worship services.

Prior to the Reformation, the Catholic tradition required the average lay person to stand silent while the music was given to the priests and the cantors. The words were sung in Latin, a language incomprehensible to the congregation. The reformers in Geneva influenced the churches there to ban all music from worship so that there was no singing at all. Calvin, and other ministers, were concerned about the coldness of worship so attempted to introduce the congregational singing of Psalms.

A couple years later, he had the opportunity to minister in Strasbourg, to a church of French refugees. The German Protestant congregations there had been singing the psalms for about a decade and caught Calvin’s attention. He began creating a Psalter in French, and when he eventually returned to Geneva, he continued to develop it. This Psalter was a work in progress and finally reached completion in 1562.

The Genevan Psalter includes 49 texts from Clement Marot, a French poet, and 101 from Theodore Beza who was a professor in Geneva. The melodies were mostly new compositions by musicians Guillaume Franc, Louis Bourgeios, and Pierre Davantes. The psalter contains 124 different tunes, some being used for more than one Psalm. Several tunes, like the ones used for Psalm 80 and Psalm 141, were borrowed from Gregorian chants.

The intervals between the notes are small and each tune stayed within an octave. Rhythms are simple using half notes and quarter notes.

Calvin wanted the songs to be primarily for the people in the congregation to sing, and not the laity or the choir only. He taught that the congregation should sing in unison to emphasize that God’s people sing praise to the Lord with one voice.

The Genevan Psalter was orginially published in French, but was translated to Dutch by Pieter Datheen using the Genevan melodies in 1566. This Dutch version became the official hymnbook for the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands.

Two well-known psalms from the Genevan Psalter are Psalm 42 and Psalm 134. This psalm uses the words to Psalm 134 in the Bible, but has the tune that we recognize as belonging to the Doxology. The words we sing to this tune are newer than the Genevan Psalter, having been written in the 1700’s.

Listen to Psalm 42

Listen to Psalm 134

Instead of using keys with majoy or minor chords, the psalms use modes. Represented among the Genevan melodies are Phrygian, like in Psalm 100

Mixolydian, like in Psalm 74

Aeolian, like in Psalm 72

Ionian, like in Psalm 97

In the first two years of publication, 27,000 copies of the 1562 Psalter were sold within a few years. The number of copies may well have reached 100,000 in over 30 editions, in addition to the thousands of copies printed in translation to nine languages, including Dutch. The psalter was an essential for practically every literate member of the Protestant congregations being formed all over Europe.

Singing the psalms in meter was at the heart of the communal prayer of God’s people in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition. Metrical psalmody is the particular gift of the Reformed tradition to the broader Christian community.

Resources used to write this blog post include:

Worship, Seeking Understanding by John D. Witvliet

Article: A Reformed Approach to Psalmody: The Legacy of the Genevan Psalter by Emily R. Brink

New Genevan Psalter edited by George van Popta, published in Canada

Recordings of Psalms were taken from the corresponding website to the New Genevan Psalter: genevanpsalter.com

Devotionals

Foundations of Hope (Part 1)

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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 5:5

As a hospital chaplain, I find that the subject of hope surfaces in every conversation. People express hope about test results, about going back home, about their family, and about recovery. Hope sits at the bedside of Hospice patients, both those with faith, and those without. Hope colors the imagination, and it makes painful journeys bearable. Everyone places their hope in someone, or in something. The attitude of hope is consistent across all types and classes of people regardless of faith backgrounds or depths of suffering. We all hope. We all look forward to something good.

The motivation of hope is our current condition. If we were perfect, living in paradise with no pain, worry, or separation from those we love, we wouldn’t feel the need to look forward to something better because we already have it. Why hope for a good outcome when our situation is already the best it can possibly be?

How many of us can say our lives are perfect, and all of our problems are resolved? Probably none of us. How many of us are living in hope today? How many of us live with pain or loneliness or an unknown future?

Hope implies that how things are right now aren’t what they should be. There’s a gap between our current experience of reality and what God has designed. We are made aware of this gap all the time. Scripture says we are made to live forever, and yet we deal with aging, weakening bodies that seem to drag us down instead of lift us up.

We see extreme weather conditions, the destruction of tornadoes, floods, and fires. And yet we know that creation is God’s He made it and designed it to work in a balanced order. We see the gap in relationships too. We know we are all made in God’s image, loved and valued by him. And yet we see conflict, envy, strife, and violence.

We could blame this gap between reality and wholeness on sin, and that is partially true. But none of us are doing anything on purpose to make our lives harder. In those moments when we are facing crisis and uncertainty, our minds are more focused on disruption than they are on sin. We can be going along just fine enjoying reasonable health, doing what we like with a measure if independence. And then, for whatever reason, something happens to interrupt our lives and introduce all sorts of mayhem into it. This is disruption, when things no longer go smoothly. At these times, we find ourselves in a place where we need something or someone to pull us through.

By default, hope kicks in. If we’ve done the work of building a relationship with God, then our hope is in him. He is the one who pulls us through disruption. This new chaos and pain in our lives might be temporary, so that after it’s over we can return to our regular state.

Or, it might not. The disruption may launch a person on a whole new journey, and it might be one filled with real struggles and suffering. What motivates us to have patience, or to see the good, or to expect God’s care and his love? Romans 5 shows us that hope does. Hope in God pulls us through disruption.

When talking of foundations to our hope, Paul mentions four of them in this passage. The first one is our suffering. We wouldn’t expect that necessarily, but suffering has a direct contribution to hope. The second one is God’s magnanimous love. I use that long word to help us imagine how big, kind, and generous God’s love is. The third foundation is Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus’ death is expression of God’s big love, and it accomplishes something very important and permanent for us. The last one is the glory we will share with God someday.

At that time, the gap between reality as we experience it, and God’s intended design will no longer exist. God will close it at the end of time when all is made right and his glory is fully revealed. Suffering is temporary but valuable. It works for us so much strength of character and it grows our hope. Hope does not disappoint. We can live each day in full confidence that we are justified, we are at peace with God, and we have gained access to God’s grace by our faith in him.