Look here for updates on cancellations and other news related to the coronovirus outbreak.
Dear St. Luke’s,
On Easter Day we celebrated redemption, and probably, in more ways than you assume. I imagine the story will live on in the mythology around St. Luke’s sacred objects for some time. The exact nature of the story has yet to be flushed out, but I imagine it will go something like this children’s story: ...
Everyone. Everyone is welcome at church. That is the way it should be. If you ask me, that’s a lot to live up to.
I was thinking about how Easter changes the world this week and was reminded of the claim often found on Episcopal Church signs and in our published materials, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes Everyone.”
To some that might seem like a new and radical claim. Or to others it might seem like a statement of the obvious. In fairness, it may be one or the other depending on how you were taught about who the church is and what it means to be a Christian.
The church has failed at welcoming everyone. Some have even converted the purposes of God’s love into moralist authoritarianism. Telling themselves, and others, to keep out those who don’t measure up or conform to arbitrary standards that are unequally applied besides.
The earliest records of the Christian tradition tell us that the early church was mostly slaves, the poor, outcasts, and women (who were oppressed and disenfranchised) that responded with faith to the message of Jesus Christ.
Support for the church came mostly from women with access to funding or other resources.
These were not “respectable” people in their Sunday best. Many persons gathered around those early Eucharistic tables would be struggling to survive. Education would not have been common. Sin and suffering would both be close at hand.
These are the forebears from whom we inherit the faith and its traditions. The welcome in our churches is radical and open because of the example set by those who came before us. Everyone is welcome at church. God, I pray that it will be so.
Seeking peace,
Fr. Chip
The beach after a storm is a place of wonders. With a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, I get up before dawn and go outside as the sun rises. I find
A tree trunk lying askew, as if casually tossed by a giant hand
Gaping holes and deep gullies in places they hadn’t been the day before
The sand stripped away in some spots and piled high in others
Shredded beach umbrellas and bent chairs strewn every which way.
Amid the wreckage, life goes on.
Sandpipers continue their dance at the edge of the breakers
Gulls cry overhead
Pelicans dive and dolphins swim
Life goes on, changed and ever new.
With a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, women friends of Jesus got up before dawn after a weekend of storms and went to the tomb as the sun rose. They found
A stone rolled away, as if casually tossed by a giant hand
A gaping hole that had once been closed and sealed
The earth stripped away beneath the displaced boulder
Grave cloths strewn and scattered every which way.
Amid the wreckage, life went on.
Birds sang. Critters crawled.
And, so much more.
Resurrection was revealed in the simple calling of a name:
“Mary.” “Rabbi.” “My brothers.”
Amid the wreckage, Christ is risen. Life prevails. Liberation is loose in the world.
In this Easter season, this time of wonder that transforms our world,
In this Easter season, as we begin to emerge from the wreckage of pandemic
Our Liberator shows us how to live with eyes wide open
to see how the pandemic has changed the landscape
to lament what has been lost and broken
to witness the power of resurrection even in the wreckage,
especially in the wreckage.
Our Liberator strengthens us to live with ears wide open
to hear the pain and confusion of others
to hear their stories of freedom and transformation
to hear Jesus every time he calls us by name even in the wreckage,
especially in the wreckage.
Our Liberator delights for us to live with hearts and minds wide open
to celebrate how life goes on without demanding that it be the way it was before
to find beauty in the brokenness,
life amid the loss,
wonder in the old and in the new.
Christ is risen. Life is changed. We are free.
What will we do with our wild, wily and wonderful freedom?
We made it! Easter is here and the sun is shining (most days anyways). And our Lord and Savior is risen from the dead!
Which is all well and good until I released the other day that I spent weeks slogging through the season of Lent only to end up on the day of Easter with a loud shout and then silence.
That is not how it’s supposed to be!
Easter is a season spreading across 50 days. That number is deliberately 10 more than the 40 days of Lent. Easter is a whole number of completeness greater than Lent. The celebration of our Lord’s triumph is more than the time we spent in preparation for it.
Remembering that Easter is not one day, one service, or one moment can be life giving. We are called forward by our traditions in the church to spend almost 2 months in joy and celebration. You’ll hear Nick and I begin services with a cry of joy at Jesus’ resurrection throughout Easter. The shout of Alleluia is once again on our lips during the Eucharist.
Just as we were called to prepare, we are now even more fully called into joy, hope, and celebration.
Know that you are in my prayers this happy season and that as we live and breathe so too our Lord lives and breathes. Alleluia!
In Joy,
Fr. Chip
Holy Scripture tells us that the fabric of the world fundamentally changed when Christ died on the cross. The natural world experienced earthquakes, and the manmade world saw signs such as the torn veil within the temple. Despite these tremors radiating out into the world, the mundane persisted. Thousands of miles away people still strived to scrap out a living from unforgiving soil, meals were being prepared, people fell in and out of love, and infants needed cleaning.
We have gone to great efforts to tell the story of our salvation in how we keep time. Easter is not meant to be the anniversary of Christ’s death on the cross, so it is bound by how we tell the story through our liturgical seasons, not by an exact date. This means every year we are subject to a moving target of when we proclaim “Alleluia” from our long penitential season of Lent. We do a lot to make the season meaningful. We have special services, our Lenten programs countdown to our season of hope and joy, and we even color eggs, because that’s tradition and you don’t mess with tradition.
In the background of all of these special events and traditions is the sound of normal day-to-day life. We’ve put a lot on hold in the office, but we all know that we still need to tackle building projects, and we need to prepare to regather in the Church, which takes a surprising amount of work. Outside of the office the world does not know that everything else is on hold. A crew is still working on our heating and cooling units, and I’m not sure if they plan on attending the Maundy Thursday service this evening.
Another reminder that life continues in the midst of Holy Week arrived yesterday in the post. A letter that reads as if several thoughts, conversations, and heaps of anxiety were chopped up and tossed into a salad arrived, and it is overwhelmingly clear that someone needs help, but the how or even the who is a bit more mysterious and difficult to decipher. These don’t arrive often, but anyone who works in Churches has probably seen a few different versions of these letters. Churches, along with other places of worship and public libraries, are often a rare haven for the authors of these letters, and we should not divorce our response to them from our sacred season.
Don’t get me wrong, we are not going to fix the world by showing a little bit of kindness. We are not saviors, but like the tremor or the torn veil on the day of Christ’s crucifixion, we can be signs of hope for a fallen world or a sign of the kingdom to come. Like the quaking ground or the torn veil, we can allow the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection change us, so others can see that things may not be what they seem. Many will recognize us as “the Church” for our Easter services and the baptisms, but I hope they will know that we are Christians by our love.
Blessings,
Nick
So this is it: The most important part of the calendar of remembrances in our church year.
Holy Week is the collection of days beginning with Palm Sunday and running through Easter Day. It encompasses triumph, betrayal, humility, Holy sharing, deep fear, painful suffering, death, and after all creation trembled there is resurrection.
The path we walk every year from the beginning to the end of Holy Week is a spiritual act of endurance. Can we really believe that all of this happened? Did Christ live and then die for our sins? Is the tomb empty on the third day? Could it be that God actually loves creation so much to do all these things?
If God does love us this much, what does that mean for our lives?
Even as we enter into these days together there is a part of living through Holy Week that each of us does on our own.
God is within us in our faith. It’s a relationship and God is present and active in our souls each in unique ways. There is a place in these days of Holy Week for us to listen to God, to learn what God wills, and to respond to God’s love with love.
I pray for us each to live into these coming days with humility and faith so that when the time comes we can stand together beside the empty tomb, rejoicing.
In Peace,
Fr. Chip
A letter from Fr. Nick about the Future at St. Luke's
Every single day, I think about getting out there. Mostly, I’m thinking about getting out there to eat a meal that somebody else cooked, or taking in an actual movie, or hanging out with actual three-dimensional people -- and, of course, worshiping with the community I love. I’ll bet you have a list of things you can’t wait to get out there to do.
And there’s another kind of getting out there that’s calling to me, too, and to many of you as well. I’m dreaming of the possibilities that come from being cast out of our old well-worn paths (let’s not call them ruts…), out of our pre-COVID automatic habits, out of the tracks we had laid from house to work to church building. There’s a precious chance for some reinvention, some expansion, some re-imaging of the ways we engage what’s out there. On the downward slope of the greatest socio-everything disruption of our lifetime, we can make our world even more connected, more just, more peaceful, more caring, more an outpost of God’s Kingdom, just because we’re out of the old track and we can re-shape the new one if we want to.
I hold Churches and their leadership in very high regard, sometimes to an unrealistic standard, and since I have found myself in positions of authority, I have tried earnestly to lead and live in a way that would allow me to sleep soundly at night. I do not like conversations about “how the sausage gets made” in terms of Church business, because I ultimately do not think that Churches should engage in practices that would make us feel ashamed, or feel the need to hide what we are doing. I believe that the Church can excel in moments where we find ourselves at crossroads with no perceivable way forward that will leave us completely unsullied. Churches should excel in these moments, because we should be collectively able to do what I find to be so difficult, which is to extend grace to those in leadership positions who have found themselves in difficult situations.
This week the clergy of the diocese were given clarified guidance about our drive in worship services. One of the points made was that distribution Eucharist is not allowed, and currently, exceptions are not being made.
Ahhh!!! I cannot believe that I am sitting here in my office at the end of my first week as your priest.
Well, it’s happened again! About a week ago I got fed up; fed up with what I was listening to on the car radio. Most of you know that I’m something of a political junkie, and this facet of my personality comes across when choosing what to tune into on the radio while driving. Frankly, given how distracted (and worked-up) I get from these talk-shows, it’s a miracle I haven’t driven off the road years ago.
Well, as I said, about a week ago I got fed up with all that. I turned the dial. Instantly, strains of Christmas carols were pumping through all ten speakers in my car. Being in a bad mood already, I was not pleased by this occurrence of yuletide messaging. All the usual objections flashed through my brain: “What? Christmas already? Thanksgiving hasn’t even had a chance to happen yet! Wow! Madison Ave. just can’t wait, can it? Why does THIS have to happen every year to a favorite music station?”
Strangely, though, I didn’t turn away. The music, and its message of hope and cheer was conquering my grumpiness. I was actually starting to feel good inside my head. My inner Grinch vanished, and all that was left for several minutes was a three-sizes-larger heart full of warmth and contentment.
Then it hit me: how you and I arrive at Christmas this year will depend entirely on how we respond to its message. Consider, for a moment, how the Shepherds responded to the message of that first Christmas. They didn’t have to respond as they did. It could have gone like this:
“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another,” (Luke 2:8ff)
Shepherd #1. The Purely Emotional Response:
“Oh, wasn’t it wonderful! What a sight! The singing was beautiful!
The lights were super! Oh, I’ll remember this as long as I live!”
Shepherd #2. The Rationalist Response:
“It was just a unique astronomical phenomenon; the conjunction
of spheroids in the ionosphere accompanied by an amazing
display of sonic waves.”
Shepherd #3. The Psychological Response:
“This can all be explained by the high state of nervous tension
created by living in a time of pandemic fear, political unrest,
financial insecurity, and unfounded hopes of a rescuer.
Shepherd #4. The Pragmatic Response:
“So we saw some bright stars and heard some singing. We still
have sheep to take care of. The night’s only half over and so is
our shift. If there’s a baby in Bethlehem he’ll still be there in the
morning.”
Shepherd #5. The Indifferent Response:
“(Yawn). What’s all the fuss about? How do you expect me to
sleep with all this racket going on!”
Shepherd #6. The Faith Response:
“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken
place, which the Lord has made known to us.”
Question #1: Which shepherd’s response comes the closest to our response?
Question #2: Which shepherd found the Savior in Bethlehem?
The Lord bless you as you prepare for the Advent/Christmas/Epiphany season ahead of us. May your worship be filled with celebration, your home glow with light and love, and your heart and spirit be lifted into joyous song and revelry at the Good News of everything that our Lord's birth means for us all.
GOD BLESS US, (and ours, and theirs, and all else's) EVERY ONE!
Peace,
Fr. Rick
This week St. Luke’s got to rise in joy at the announcement of the Rev. Nick Hull being called as our next Priest-in-Charge. Its a moment in the life of our Parish that signals hope, life, and change. Many hours of work, prayers, and reflection by our search committee and Nick himself led to what we get to revel in now.
Anticipation can be maddening and wonderful. I know I felt that acutely on my wedding day. Knowing something good is just around the corner can make you sit up straighter or laugh longer.
All the while, there is still some time to wait.
Nick and his family will be joining St. Luke’s in the middle of January, a little less than two months from now.
I’m reflecting on that this week as we continue to receive news about the Covid pandemic, it’s resurgence and the promise of a vaccine that is highly effective. All signs point to having a viable way to immunize against this horrible disease and return to life together.
All the while remembering that it is still a ways off. There are moments of importance between then and now, both with Nick’s arrival and the vaccine.
Our nation will celebrate thankfulness this coming week. Advent arrives just after. Christmas, the celebration of our savior's birth, is at the end of December. Then, New Year's.
These moments are just as worthy of our joy at the moments we hope for beyond them, no matter how restricted our socialization may be.
My prayer is that we will continue to show Christ’s love through our actions of caring for each other, keeping each other safe by staying home, and living each of these moments in the joy they are worthy of.
In peace,
Rev. Deacon Chip Russell
With the announcement that Joe Biden has enough electoral votes to be the President-Elect, some are joyous, and some are dejected. Some are laughing and some are weeping. All the emotions and reactions we feel are to be honored. Here's the thing: our work as followers of Jesus hasn't changed. Remember the promises in our Baptismal Covenant?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons loving your neighbor as yourself?
Yes, the configuration of our government matters because it has enormous ramifications. However, when we are baptized, we gain agency. We become Christ bearers and our task is to align ourselves with God so that we are available to be God's instruments to bring God's realm of justice, peace, and mercy near. I realized that since Election Day, I have not been present to the actual world around me. My focus is on what might happen instead of what actually is happening.
In Walden, Thoreau writes, "I have never met [a person] who was fully alive. How could I look [that person] in the face?" My hope is that I and all faithful people will wake from our preoccupation and distraction of the election and attend to the hopes, and joys, and hurts of the world right around us. "Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." In other words, this is the only day we have, so let us be fully incarnated here and now and do the work God gives us to do wherever we are.
If we are to "seek and serve Christ in all persons," then we must let go of our preoccupation with what happened or didn't happen and embrace the world around us. A spiritual teacher when listening to one of his/her students go on and on about mystical theology would finally ask the person, "Yes, but where are your feet?" In other words, "Are you grounded in the here and now?" It's not enough to be wise about the universe if you are unkind or simply a jerk to your neighbors.
Perhaps it's time for us to attend to the events and people in front of us. Perhaps it's time to focus on this moment which is the only moment we have instead of what people should have done in the past or ought to do in the future. The present moment is the only place reconciliation happens.
There's a reason Desmond Tutu entitled his book about the struggle over South Africa's apartheid No Future Without Forgiveness. Until we find a way to reconcile, we will simply transfer the current division and acrimony to another subject. The doorway to forgiveness is to let go of a desired future and stop defining others by one act or one aspect of their lives.
Some time ago, I read an account of the 50th Anniversary of Gettysburg in 1913. The surviving soldiers from both sides dressed in their uniforms for a re-enactment of Pickett's Charge. The Union soldiers took their places on Seminary Ridge, and the Confederate soldiers stood on the farmland below. Instead of rifles and bayonets, they had canes and crutches. When the two armies approached one another, the Confederate army let out a rebel yell. However, instead of shooting or stabbing, they embraced. They put the past to rest -- they forgave -- and they stepped into new life.
Let us not wait fifty years or fifty days for the healing to start. Reconciliation is our calling; it's what we promised in baptism and it's time for us to embrace our calling.
When I was a child there was always a part of playground culture where everyone would try to one up the last person who had everyone's attention. Going high on a swing? Well, I’ll try to go higher. Hang a long time from the monkey bars? I’ll try and hang longer. And so on. I remember one day in particular in Elementary School when someone claimed they could run farther than me. They didn’t know that I had asthma and that they were probably right. It didn’t stop me from trying to best them even. What did happen is that I failed to run farther, or even as far, as they had. I didn’t have the endurance.
I was reminded of these events this week in the wake of the national elections. Oh, I know there are temptations to compare our electoral process to a playground but that wouldn’t be fair to the election or the playground.
Instead, I’m reflecting on the feelings I had after not measuring up to my peers in elementary school. I remember feeling broken, wrong, and less. All of that was wrapped up in this one event and it weighed me down. I learned that I was good at other things and grew to appreciate myself for those qualities over time. I even outgrew the asthma. Endurance wasn’t everything in the world.
It’s tempting to wrap all of our emotions into an election. To engage the world in a moment of winners and losers. To take the outcome of a single event and hold it up as what’s true.
As Christian’s we know that God is calling us to be changed. That we are constantly transformed by the power and love of God. Any single moment is always the gateway to the next moment where the justice and truth of God might be more fulfilled in the world through our actions. We know that change is a part of our faith.
As a Sophomore in College I had my parents ship me my trusted bicycle and I began to ride it again as I had (forgive the pun) religiously in my teenage years. A few months later a few friends and I decided to take a long ride together around town. We rode for 16 miles. At the end both my friends were worn out and one commented to me that I didn’t look tired. I remember answering, “I’m not really. I never used to track how far I rode. I guess it was farther than I thought.”
There are times in our lives when we can’t match our own hopes. There are other times when we may not even know our own strength or how much has changed over time. Sometimes, those are the exact same moment.
Know that no matter what we are called forward by our God into what comes next, no matter what that is, and that we are blessed with the grace to bring God’s Kingdom closer.
In peace,
Rev. Deacon Chip Russell
That’s a question a lot of us are asking just now. Our elections this next Tuesday seem almost beyond hope of bringing us together as a people. Whatever “side” any of us may be on, there is a feeling that nothing can turn out well. Too much suspicion and rancor, and even distrust and hate, is now imbedded in our National politics. So, we ask, “What can I do to change all this?” I do have an answer to that; at least a beginning-point for changing things. It’s Prayer…
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself saying to friends and family that I hope to see them “Soon”. It isn’t a joke and almost always the immediate reply from them is that they share that hope. So it was curious to me when I realized how thin and far away “soon” was starting to feel.
Two weeks ago I confessed my love of Oreo Cookies. I feel compelled to mention it again because there is always a moment in that relationship with my food, when I run out. All of the cookies are gone. I have shared them with my wife and eaten them myself until this moment when the next time I have any Oreos is, “Soon”. There is a hurdle to cross before I can have more, going to the store. No small matter in Covid-tide.
There it is again. Covid. A deadly and terrible sickness hurting and killing some, while distorting time and perception for the rest of us. The press of the pandemic is a weight that shifts but does not seem to lessen. It pushes “Soon” farther and farther away.
In Eucharist, there is a moment called the Anamnesis. It ties past, present, and future together in one all encompassing now. On Sunday we will say it this way, “Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again.” Definitions fail in describing this. In Anamnesis, Christ is on the cross, stepping out of the tomb, and welcoming us on the last day all at once.
The reality of God’s love is not limited by time. “Soon” is just as much “now” as it is “past” to God. When we come to the table together and receive the presence of God in the Eucharist we too can experience that gathering together of all time that is outside of time. We are gathered together as we hope to be.
Soon.
In peace,
Rev. Deacon Chip Russell
Dear St. Luke’s Family,
Does a broken prayer still work? Can God understand us, even when we can’t find the words that say what we think and feel? We’ve all had such prayers; ones that just don’t say what we want, that don’t sound/feel as though we’ve made ourselves understood. When those prayers happen, will God still “get us?” Psalm six, from our Daily Office readings this week, can help us answer that question, along with a little help from the Apostle Paul.
Blessings,
Fr. Rick
Psalm 6: When words fail. How often we struggle with our prayers! We want God to understand us; to know how we really feel, the depths of our thoughts and emotions. We worry that if we can’t quite say it as we fully mean it, God might not understand; might not understand just how afflicted we are, or how urgent is our cause, or how honest is our reasoning. And, if we can’t get it right, then we worry: God, we think, just might not answer in the way we need.
In our Psalm this week, Psalm 6, (the first of the “Sorrowful Seven”), the Psalmist is struggling for the right words, when suddenly, words literally fail. It happens in verse 3. It’s not as clear in the Prayerbook translation as it is in the NRSV, but it can still be detected. After laying out the preceding verses with mounting reasons for the need of deliverance, the Psalmist begs for God to intervene. The verse reads, “My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O Lord---how long?
To this point, the Psalmist has “held it together.” The rhythm of the poetry and stanzas is working, the rhyming at the end of each line (in the Hebrew) is successfully happening, then--then, it all falls apart. No rhyme, no rhythm; even the syntax of language itself disintegrates. The Psalmist is at a complete loss for words. He is at the impossible point of trying to express the inexpressible. This is, I think, the only place in all the Psalms where this happens, where words truly fail.
The effect of this on the Psalmist is good, though. He changes direction and immediately gets to the point, blurting out, “Turn, O lord, save my life;”. We don’t know if this is a desperate shout, with hands uplifted in an agitated cry, or a hushed whisper from a soul completely spent. Some of you, perhaps all of us, have been in this place; maybe even sending out the desperate shout and the spent whisper simultaneously in the deep prayer of our souls. And, we wonder, “Has God heard this? Does God understand? Even when I can’t even think it straight, much less say it?”
Here is God’s answer to our question. It comes from the eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs (and “groans” KJV) too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Rom 8:26-27 NRSV) Yes! This passage answers. Even when words fail, even when thoughts don’t “gel” for us, God still understands us. In such moments, God understands us better than we do ourselves. That is God’s promise in this passage from Paul.
Even the Psalmist seems to understand this. For a few verses further on from his broken words he says, “for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping…the Lord accepts my prayer.” His weeping, moaning, and tears have been the deepest part of the prayer. What Paul is telling us, what the Psalmist already understands, is that God does hear and understand us even when we cannot fully understand ourselves. We need have no fear for God’s understanding of us. God will always hear us and “get us” in our prayers.
I love Oero cookies. I love them almost as much as I love plain white rice with a little bit of soy sauce. The only difference being that I can eat a nearly endless amount of Oreo cookies but only about 2 bowls of rice before I’m full.
Having some Oreos is one of the little joys I allow myself, as a practice in generosity towards myself. Being generous is as much a skill as it is a good deed. It takes practice, using it more often will make it easier, and leaving it unused will see it diminish.
One of the best ways I know of to build the skill of generosity is to bring it into my everyday life, especially at home. Hence, the joy of Oreos.
Covid has brought into our lives a new awareness of imbalance and the needs of our vulnerable neighbors. Being able to be safe at home while a service industry employee must risk going in to work day in and day out in order to survive is a very real difference being experienced by thousands of people in Fairfax county. Does this mean that I should feel guilty about the joy I receive from a few Oreos?
There isn’t one right answer. God doesn’t want us to live in fear and heart ache all our lives. We are Easter people, living in the joy of the resurrected Christ all because of God’s will for creation. So too, God wishes us to be generous and knows that we are creatures that have to learn the skills of love that come so naturally to God’s-self. I should be sharing my Oreos.
If I start by sharing Oreos, even at home, I may learn to better share the rest of what I have with the world. May my awareness of my Joy inspire me to act so that others may have the same.
In peace,
Rev. Deacon Chip Russell
Dear St. Luke’s Family,
Do you sometimes have trouble telling God how you really feel? As though there are some feelings and thoughts that just aren’t appropriate to say to God? Doubts, angers, and fears that will be found unacceptable? Reading several of our Psalms from the Daily Office this week has reminded me that the Psalmists didn’t seem to suffer from our polite reservations. They laid it all out in their prayers. Consider reading Psalms 80, 77, and 79 today. I pray that you will find them, and my reflection, helpful in this.
Peace,
Rick+
The Psalms: The prayers that pray us. I think of the Psalms as the prayers that pray us. That’s because the Psalmists are boldly honest, sometimes bluntly so, in their prayers with God. We see it in all our Psalms this week. Their honesty shocks us and even causes us to recoil at times. “I would never say such a thing to God!” We think. “What a terrible attitude, thought, wish, request!” We can come away from the Psalms, if we allow ourselves to, with a sense that we are different from the writers; that we are a better people. But on closer inspection, if we are honest, we find that we have merely tamped down and covered over the same in ourselves. The honesty of the Psalmists prays for us what we do not want to own. And that is what God wants. God wants us to be honest about what we are thinking and feeling. It is when we have trod the breadth of our thinking, and plumbed the depths of our emotions, that our prayers become a dialogue with God. A Place of meeting. Be fully honest in your prayers today.
Then do one more thing as the Psalmists nearly always do: It is there, in verse 11 of Psalm 77, “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old.” Remember and dwell on God’s faithfulness in your life in the past. It will restore your sense of God’s faithfulness to you for the present, and it will give you confidence in God’s faithfulness for you into the future.