Youth Ministry Initiative

Anthology: Pamela D. Couture

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Year of Publication

2006

From Claus Westermann, The Psalms: Structure, Content and Message:

‘Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps.
103:1-2). What sort of call is this? An unknown person, with a world view, environment, and life-style infinitely distant from ours, used these words to raise a call that was primarily self-addressed. But this summons has the remarkable capacity to evoke an echo in those who hear it. nan
We should pause here a moment and marvel at what confronts us. What sort of call is this? It is neither a spiritual heirloom nor a leftover relic bearing witness to the tenacious power of religious rites; for this summons to praise has in fact succeeded in breaking through the limitations and boundaries characteristic of religions. Hence if a modern person hears and understands the call with which Psalm 102 begins, if that person takes it up and repeats it, then something inexplicable happens: this call is miraculously handed on, and, once begun, it can no longer be silenced.///That the call to praise has such an effect cannot be based on anything else but the foundation given in the psalm itself: ‘…and forget not all his benefits.’ ‘Bless (or praise) the Lord…and forget not!’ These two calls both have the same meaning. Why did this unknown person address this call to himself? So that God’s benefits would not be forgotten. The coordination of “Bless” and “forget not” expresses a profound truth: only those who praise do not forget. One may indeed speak about God, and still have forgotten him long ago. One may reflect upon the nature of God, and still have long since forgotten him. Forgetting God and turning away from God always begins when praise has been silenced. The secret of praise is the power it has to make connection with God; through praise one remains with God. This power of praise to make connection with God is what propels the call of Psalm 103 across the centuries and into the presence of those living today (5-6).///. . . . Praise of God affirms joyfully, thankfully, and with a sense of relief the great power who unites and spans the heights and depths of human existence, …who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.///The Psalms embrace these great contrasts. In never-ending and yet ever-new ways they always circle about one center: human existence in its mighty, terrifying, and glorious rhythm of loss and rescue, cry for help and shout of exultation, capture and release, laughter and weeping. Even more profound and more comprehensive than such contrasts are those of being near to God and far from God. Turning away, revolting, and being indifferent to God can all be restored and healed by the one “who forgives all your iniquity.”///In a mighty image that needs no further explanation, this psalm praises the mystery of the power that integrates the contrasts and disjunctions of human life. This power encompasses such tremendous dimensions that in its presence the most extreme contrasts in human existence become small and insignificant.///(8) ….Praise and lament are the two basic melodies which, like echoes, accompany God’s actions on this long path of history. In the Psalms they are developed into mighty fugues and variations. This polarity of praise and lament is different from the familiar polarity of petition and thanksgiving in our modern prayers. The arc which the pendulum makes as it swings between the poles of lament and praise is much greater than that between petition and thanksgiving.///This is closely connected with another difference in the Psalms singing and praying (which in later times became more and more separated were still united; psalms were sung prayers or prayed singing. As songs, they are at the same time what we call poetry. To be sure, they are poetry in a different sense than our modern poetry, but for all of that they are still formulated, “poetic” expressions of thought. Thus the Psalms till unite in themselves what for us are three separate types of compositions, which in the course of subsequent centuries have split apart. They are prayers (words directed to God in supplication or rejoicing), poetry (poetical expressions of thought), and song (they go beyond the mere speaking or even recital of a poem and become music.).///As a unity of prayer, poetry and song, the psalms belong to a world which is no longer our world, and we will never fully understand or appreciate much of what is in them (10).///Those “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” are those whose laments constitute a great part of the Psalter. If God’s looking down from the heights into our depths became reality in Christ, then God’s coming down into our poor flesh and blood also means that God became one who suffered, and that this suffering was expressed in lamentation. The New Testament expresses this clearly by incorporating Psalm 22 in the passion story. The frequent quotations from this psalm in the passion narrative indicate that the primitive church saw a connection at this point. Above all, Mark 15:34, Jesus’s cry from the cross that uses the initial words of Psalm 22, indicates how the primitive church saw this connection. It understood that Christ made the lament of Psalm 22 his own lament. How much Jesus himself must have lived in the Psalms! How much the first Christian community must have lived in the Psalms if it was Psalm 22 in particular which became the psalm of the passion story! In this psalm the depth of the lamenter’s vexation and temptation to despair and the miracle of the reversal of his suffering come to unique expression.///By taking into himself this last trial of being forsaken by God, Christ descended into the depth of human isolation and made our suffering his suffering to his depths. The despairing questions of those who suffer in our world (Why? How long?) are questions which were known by him in whom God’s goodness became human. They are not foreign to him. He took our suffering as part of his suffering to the fullest possible extent.///Psalm 22, however, was taken up into the passion story as a representative of psalms of lament in general. All of them come to their goal in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. How the lament itself changes because of this was shown in our section concerning the enemies in psalms of lament: complaints about enemies no longer have to lead to petitions directed against these enemies. Into the place formerly occupied by petitions against enemies comes, as the passion indicates, intercession for them. (124-125)///….
3. If, however, Psalm 22 was incorporated into the passion story, then such incorporation must include the entire psalm. For viewed in its totality, Psalm 22 is a lament which has been reversed. Its second part (from v 22 on) is praise by a person who has been delivered, praise which has anticipated the actual deliverance. just as it can be said in the second part of Psalm 22: “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him…(v.24). So, similarly, the proclamation of the earliest messengers of the resurrection was full of the message that God responded to the cry from the cross. The message of Easter is narrative praise. It is possible that the phrase that appears in Matthew’s Easter account, “go and tell my brethren (Matt.
28:10) is an allusion to the beginning of the second part of Psalm 22, “I will tell of thy name to my brethren.”///Whether or not this is a quotation from Psalm 22 is unimportant. What is essential, however, is the fact that the statement at the center of the resurrection message, “whom God raised…” has the structure of narrative praise, “God has acted!” The examples of the first sermons of the Apostles show how this ultimate deed of God was viewed, as the last in the succession of God’s great deeds, which in the Old Testament had aroused praise from the liberated. In this connection it is possible to see a consistent feature in the individual’s psalms of praise, that those who there praised God understood their deliverance as being snatched from death. Likewise the statements of confidence in Psalms 16, 73 and elsewhere express the conviction “thou dost not give me up to Sheol…” (16:102).///The apostles, as messengers of Christ’s resurrection, stand in the succession of witnesses to the great deeds of God. They are witnesses who, in the Psalms, must give an account before the whole congregation about what God had done for them. Now that the time is fulfilled, the call to praise God, which had its origin in this witness to God’s deeds, is the call to follow Christ. As in the Psalms nations and kings were called to join Israel in praising God, so the call now has transformed itself into the message of Christ’s messengers, who carry the call to come to Christ farther and farther, even to the ends of the earth. (126).

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From John Wesley, John Wesley's Rule":

Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.

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1738

From John Wesley, Journal, N. Curnock, ed., (May 24, 1738):

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

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1777

From John Wesley, Letter to Miss March" (December 10, 1777):

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.

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2006

From John Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems:

The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.

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2006

From Simone Weil, Waiting for God, reprinted in Job and Shawchuck, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants at p 40:

The love of our neighbor is the love which comes down from God to man. It precedes that which rises from men to God. God is longing to come down to those in affliction. As soon as a soul is disposed to consent, though it were the last, the most miserable, the most deformed of souls, God will precipitate himself into it in order, through it, to look at and listen to the afflicted. Only as time passes does the soul become aware that he is there. But, though it finds no name for him, wherever the afflicted are loved for themselves alone, it is God who is present. God is not present, even if we invoke him, where the afflicted are merely regarded as an occasion for doing good. They may even be loved on this account, but then they are in their natural role, the role of matter and of things. We are to bring to them in their inert, anonymous condition a personal love. RefMgr field[22]: 1

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1985

From Alice Walker, The Color Purple, (Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster inc., New York), 1985:

[Dedication page:] To the Spirit: Without whose assistance Neither this book Nor I Would have been Written. — [ at 199:] Dear Nettie, I don’t write to God no more, I write to you. What happen to God? ast Shug. Who that? I say. She look at me serious. Big a devil as you is, I say, you not worried bout no God, surely. She say, Wait a minute. Hold on just a minute here. Just because I don’t harass it like some peoples us know don’t mean I ain’t got religion. What God do for me? I ast. She say, Celie! Like she shock. He gave you life, good health, and a good woman that love you to death. Yeah, I say, and he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won t ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown. She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let ‘im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you. She talk and she talk, trying to budge me way from blasphemy. But I blaspheme much as I want to. All my life I never care what people thought bout nothing I did, I say. But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don’t think. Just sit up there glorying in being deef, I reckon. But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain. I is a sinner, say Shug. Cause I was born. I don’t deny it. But once you find out what’s out there waiting for us, what else can you be? Sinners have more good times, I say. You know why? she ast. Cause you ain’t all the time worrying bout God, I say. Naw, that ain’t it, she say. Us worry bout God a lot. But once us feel loved by God, us do the best we can to please him with what us like. You telling me God love you, and you ain’t never done nothing for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that? But if God love me, Celie, I don’t have to do all that. Unless I want to. There’s a lot of other things I can do that I speck God likes. Like what? I ast. Oh, she say. I can lay back and just admire stuff. Be happy. Have a good time. Well, this sound like blasphemy sure nuff. She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. and I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God. Some folks didn’t have him to share, I said. They the ones didn’t speak to me while I was there struggling with my big belly and Mr. __________ children. Right, she say. Then she say: Tell me what your God look like, Celie. Aw naw, I say. I’m too shame. Nobody ever ast me this before, so I’m sort of took by surprise. Besides, when I think about it, It don’t seem quite right. But it all I got. I decide to stick up for him, just to see what Shug say. Okay, I say. He big and old and tall and graybearded and white. He wear white robes and go barefooted. Blue eyes? she ast. Sort of bluish gray. cool. Big though. White lashes, I say. She laugh. Why you laugh? I ast. I don t think it so funny. What you expect him to look like, Mr. _________? That wouldn’t be no improvement, she say. Then she tell me this old white man is the same God she used to see when she prayed. If you wait to find God in church, Celie, she say, that’s who is bound to show up, cause that’s where he live. How come? I ast. Cause that’s the one that’s in the white folk’s white bible. Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do with it. How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing one thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is getting cursed? I never thought bout that. Nettie say somewhere in the bible it say Jesus hair was like lamb’s wool, I say. Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he’d have to have it conked before anybody pay him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair kinky. That’s the truth, I say. Ain’t no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest. You mad cause he don’t seem to listen to your prayers. Humph! Do the mayor listen to anything colored say? Ask Sofia, she say. But I don’t have to ast Sofia. I know white people never listed to colored, period. If they do, they only listed long enough to tell you what to do. Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don t know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.` It? I ast. Yeah, It. God ain’t a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ast. Don’t look like nothing, she say. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else. Including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It. Shug a beautiful something, let me tell you. She frown a little, look out cross the yard, lean back in her chair, look like a big rose. She say, My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it. It sort of like you know what, she say, grinning and rubbing high up on my thigh. Shug! I say. Oh, she say. God love all them feelings. That’s some of the best stuff God did. And when you know God loves ’em you enjoys ’em a lot more. You can just relax, go with everything that’s going, and praise God by liking what you like. God don’t think it dirty? I ast. Naw, she say. God made it. Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. What it do when it pissed off? I ast. Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. Yeah? I say. Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect. You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say. Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved. Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? Well, us talk and talk about God, but I’m still adrift. Trying to chase that old white man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from? Not the little wildflowers. Nothing. Now that my eyes opening, I feels like a fool. Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr. _______ s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it is like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a tall. Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain’t. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself down on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up flowers, wind, water, a big rock. But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. Amen. RefMgr field[22]: 1

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2006

From Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, at 228-229:

In spite of all these depressing observations, Koheleth is far from holding that events in the world are simply a haphazard jumble. He is aware of something which mysteriously rules and orders every event; he usually refers to this phenomenon by the neutral word time and thereby touches on the fact that every activity and every event is subject to a certain determinism. We recall the great text which we have already discussed in another context and which states that a time and an hour have been set for everything, for every intention under heaven (3:1-8, 17). Koheleth returns to this idea again and again. For everything there is a time and a way (8.6).
There is, however, no comfort in this determinism of every phenomenon, for often enough, as a result of it, what man has learned by hard toil is rendered useless. Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. . . .(Eccles.
9:11f.)
I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has made it so, in order that men should fear him. Eccles.
3:14. Here, too, the emphasis is on that which is completely unalterable, on that to which man has to submit. Thus we find ourselves face to face with the strangely paradoxical fact that to Koheleth the world and events appear to be completely opaque and that, on the other hand, he is aware that they are completely within the scope of God’s activity. The point at which this divine activity becomes obvious to him as an actual power and reality is precisely the realization that there is a time set for every occurrence. . . .

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1996

From Walter Waggoner, Sermon, July 14, 1996:

In a museum in Amsterdam the guides and docents have noted a remarkable bit of behavior by the tourists. In one of the galleries is a handsome copy of the splendid statue of Apollo Belvedere – the human figure at its finest. It is fascinating, say the guides, to see how passing tourists unconsciously straighten up as they pause to gaze at Apollo.
In a discussion between President Nathan Pusey of Harvard and a law school dean: The question was how to increase enrollment. Pusey said: Raise your admission standards. The toughest schools to get in are the ones which attract more and better students.

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1968

From Hubert van Zeller, We Die Standing Up (January 1, 1968):

Systematized prayer is a sort of mental crutch – something to lean upon when the limbs have not sufficient strength to propel the body on their own.”

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