One of the joys that my wife and I share is not only that we live within a few minutes’ drive from three of our grandchildren, but that our house backs onto miles of forest. The result is that our back yard is almost constantly being visited by wildlife—even including a bear! But our most frequent visitors are the birds. This summer we’ve counted seventeen different varieties of them, but I’ve got to say that our favourites are the hummingbirds. We love to watch them zip madly back and forth across the yard, stopping every once in a while to suck up some nectar into their needle-like beaks.
The hummingbird is the smallest of all bird species. A mature hummingbird weighs less than a nickel and their nests are no bigger in size than a walnut. Their tiny hearts thump away at an amazing rate of over twelve hundred beats a minute. They lay their eggs (which are about the size of a jellybean) twice in the summer. And, sad to say, in a few weeks’ time we won’t be seeing them anymore, because they will be starting their four-thousand-kilometer journey back over the eastern United States and across the Gulf of Mexico to their winter quarters in Central America.
I often find myself asking, how do they do it? How do those tiny fledglings, only weeks old, know when they should be heading south? How do they know their destination? And how do they know how to get there? It seems that somehow it’s all been implanted in their tiny brains from birth.
What a contrast to us human beings! When we’re born there’s almost nothing we can do for ourselves, except occasionally fill our diapers! We have to be taught practically everything. And, unlike the hummingbirds, it seems that nowadays I can’t find my way anywhere without a GPS!
It shouldn’t surprise us then that, like almost everything else in life, the worship of God is something that has to be learned. And in many ways the psalm from which we have read this morning gives us some useful instruction on how to worship. So let’s take a look at it for the next few minutes and discover what it has to teach us.
Sing (1-5a)
The first lesson comes in the opening words: “Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob.” Unlike professional football or tennis, worship is a participatory sport. True worship demands our involvement, both spiritually, mentally and even physically. And so it’s vitally important that we listen carefully to the Scripture readings, that we join in the prayers (not least with a hearty “Amen!”), that we sing the hymns…
Now at this point you might be saying to yourself, “You don’t really want to hear me sing. I can’t hold a tune in a bucket.” Well, neither can I, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. So sing anyway. It’s good for you—not only spiritually (and this may surprise you) but also psychologically and physically.
A report published in Australia in 2008 revealed that on average, choral singers rated their satisfaction with life higher than the general public—even when the actual problems they experienced were more substantial than those faced by those around them. Another study from ten years before that found that after nursing home residents took part in a singing program for a month, there were significant decreases in the levels of both anxiety and depression.
Two and a half centuries ago John Wesley was concerned about the state of singing that he heard in the churches where he preached. Here are a few of the pieces of advice that he offered at the time:
Sing all.
See that you join with the whole congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing.
Sing lustily and with a good courage.
Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Do not be afraid of your voice now, nor ashamed of its being heard …
Above all sing spiritually.
Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is … offered to God continually. So shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
So it is that our psalm this morning calls upon us to sing aloud, to shout for joy, to raise a song… And we find the same when we read the New Testament, where we are encouraged to “be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:18-20).
Remember (5b-10a)
So we are encouraged to sing. And the second thing our psalm calls us to do is to remember. The problem with the people of Israel was that they frequently suffered from collective memory loss. We might call it a kind of spiritual amnesia. They were inclined to forget the God who had made his covenant with Abraham, who had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, who had brought them into the Promised Land.
Now ask my wife and she’ll tell you that I’m not always all that good at remembering things, including names. We have new next-door neighbours who just moved in last week. They’re a young couple from the United States and they are excited to be in Nova Scotia. The other evening we spent a few moments introducing ourselves—and fifteen minutes later, do you think I could remember their names? A few days later I saw them in their driveway and I apologized that I had forgotten their names. I had hardly gotten the words out of my mouth when they apologized that they couldn’t recall my name either!
So it is that the psalmist writes about hearing “a voice I had not known”. Yet it was a voice that everyone in Israel should have recognized. It was the voice that had called creation into being. It was the voice that had spoken softly to Adam and Eve in the Garden. It was the voice that had thundered from the top of Mount Sinai. It was the voice who addressed his people time and time again through the prophets. Yet it had become unfamiliar, forgotten, not even a distant echo from the past.
And so the psalmist calls them to remember: to bring to mind the remarkable series of events that had formed their ancestors into a nation; to remember how God had had heard their groaning as they laboured as slaves in Egypt; to remember how he had enabled them to escape from the clutches of Pharaoh and his armies; to remember how he had provided for them in their forty-year trek across the wilderness and brought them into the Promised Land. And although they might have forgotten him, he would remain true to his promise, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
This morning, in a few moments’ time, we will gather around the Lord’s Table and you and I too will be called to remember, as we hear once again our Lord’s familiar words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” We will take the bread into our hands to remember the body that was broken for us. And as we bring the cup to our lips, we remember the blood that was shed for us.
The challenge, though, is to take that memory into the week with us. It’s so easy, once we’ve walked out of the church and slammed the car door, to allow the world to take over once again. There are all those little details like the lunch that needs to be prepared, the lawn that needs to be mown, the text that just came up on our cellphone, and the list goes on and on…
So let me suggest a couple of things that can help us to remember: As you rise in the morning, thank God for the gift of another day and to ask for his guidance through it; before each meal (if you don’t do it already) express your gratitude for his gracious provision—simple acts in themselves but small ways in which we can keep our focus in the right place.
Open wide (10b-16)
Before we leave this psalm today, I would be remiss if I didn’t point you to what I think is one of the most wonderful promises that God gives us in the Bible—and it is so easy to overlook. It nestled in the latter half of verse 10. There God says to us, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”
The words take me back to those birds in our back yard. The picture that it brings to my mind is of a nest of baby hatchlings, their little beaks opened as wide as they can stretch them, waiting, trusting in the mother bird to feed them. Like those little birds, whatever the cause of our spiritual hunger, we have a God we can trust and who is able to fill it.
Indeed, Jesus assures us that God knows our needs before we ask (Matthew 6:8). He once asked his disciples,
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)
And so the psalm stands as an encouragement to us—a gracious invitation—to trust God, as the little birds trust that the mother will return to the nest. Now there may be some of you who think that this kind of thinking is naïve, that it won’t stand up amid the ups and downs of life in the real world. But let me tell you, it does.
For the last six months I’ve been following the journal of a woman in Ukraine. Again and again I find myself dumbfounded by her faith in God’s provision. Here is something she wrote just the other day:
I am reminded once again of the verses in Philippians 4:11-13. ‘I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ … We don’t need to postpone life till after the war. We live it to the maximum now!
Our psalm this morning is an invitation to do just what she says, to live life to the maximum—joyfully to trust in God, who did not withhold even his own Son and graciously gives us all things (Romans 8:32).
