Monday, May 21, 2018
O Lord,
what a variety of things you have made! In
wisdom you have made them all. The earth
is full of your creatures. Here is the
ocean, vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small. See the ships sailing along, and Leviathan,
which you made to play in the sea. They
all depend on you to give them food as they need it. When you supply it, they gather it. You open your hand to feed them, and they are
richly satisfied. But if you turn away
from them, they panic. When you take
away their breath, they die and turn again to dust. When you give them your breath, life is
created, and you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the Lord continue forever! The Lord takes pleasure in all he has made! The earth trembles at his glance; the
mountains smoke at his touch. I will
sing to the Lord as long as I live. I
will praise my God to my last breath! May
all my thoughts be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Psalm 104:24-34(NLT)
I made the mistake
of falling asleep on the couch last weekend.
Well, the nap was not an error…naps solve many problems, and head-off a
truckload of marital discord!
The lack of judgment
on my part was to leave the TV remote ungarded.
When I awoke I discovered the glaring reality that “we” were watching Free
Willy (ok…she was watching; I had been
in suspended animation)! The film[2]
is 25 years old and has never lost its’ smarmy-ness. But that’s not the reason I despise it. Every time I see that moment where the killer
whale jumps the barrier to freedom, I get this lump in my throat that reminds
me I never succeeded fully in that big boys don’t cry thing.
Truth be told, I’m
glad I haven’t graduated to that cold, unfeeling, never-moved with emotion “big
boy” status; how would you ever rejoice over God’s creation or love? Psalms are love songs to God, and in this one,
the writer proclaims that, to his last breath he will lift praise to the Lord. Deep down I know it’s true that my soul wants
to join the Psalmist and secure my place at the altar, offering the kind of unbridled
praise only a cleansed and freed-to-worship heart can offer.
More truth be told,
the only thing that ever stops me from that is embarrassment over my own sin,
and the hypocrisy of not wanting to look foolish or hypocritical to others by
playing the part of worship without having holy hands cleansed by God’s extreme
forgiveness. And when you read this
Psalm’s description of the simple rejoicing of the earth’s creatures, who have
no embarrassment, but simply live in the provision of God’s hand, playing in
the sea like Leviathan, the whale monster…it is a reality that they come a lot
closer to worship than I do at times.
For You Today
If your worship
was less than a connection with the eternal Almighty yesterday, maybe today you
will do what the sea monster does constantly, eat what God provides, and keep
remembering you’re part of the creation God loves.
And if, like Willy
the killer whale, there is a barrier between you and the freedom to live like
you were created, go ahead and jump…you’ve got reason to rejoice!
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