Jul 28 2021 Day 153 Psalms 131:1–136:26

O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

This is one of the psalms we read as we process during the Palm Sunday procession, marking Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The psalm remembers all of the good and wonderful things, the parting of the Red Sea, the overthrowing of the Egyptians, striking down kings and giving their inheritance to Israel. It doesn’t really focus on the not so great parts of the narrative between God and Israel.

For example, before the parting of the Red Sea, the people were enslaved and harshly treated in Egypt. Before the kings were overthrown, they mistreated the people of Israel. Joseph was sold by his brothers. Brothers killed brothers.

Is this repeated line designed to white-wash the harder bits, pretending they never happened? Or is it designed to just reiterate that regardless of what happens, God is good, and God’s love endures forever?

The accompanying reflection for this section of scripture is from Henri Nouwen, and he definitely has an opinion about giving thanks, during the good and bad times. He writes, “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for.”

Yes! I love this. To be grateful in the midst of it all is to be truly grateful. In my world, I’ve got a few unsettled things right now, including family, job and housing. To be worried or ungrateful during the turmoil is to deny God’s ultimate providence and goodness. Sometimes It’s hard to express gratitude when it seems like things are in the toilet, but deep down, I believe God’s got this, and God’s got me. I might not understand or like how things are. Right now, I definitely don’t like how things are with my sick loved one. And I’d be hard pressed to be grateful to God for the bureaucrats who aren’t helping. But I’m not asked to be grateful for people who are seemingly hindering my desires for my loved one’s safety. I am asked to be grateful to God, for God’s goodness and love. That, I can do.

I’m reminded of the idea I read about from the Dalai Lama. He wrote that we should be grateful for difficult people, because it’s only with them that we actually can practice our skills of kindness and grace. So maybe it’s not that I’m grateful for the unhelpful people, but rather I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be bigger than that, to not respond in-kind.

This morning, I’m thinking about how to give thanks to the Lord in the midst of this storm.