A Word from Pastor Nathan

During our Lenten Vesper services, we have used the psalms that the lectionary prescribes to provide a framework for our evening worship. The Psalms are a marvelous compilation of poetry. Where else in the Bible can you find lyrics of cadence and rhyme that speak to the dark of night and the light of day?

A frequent question in biblical trivia games asks, “What is the longest Psalm?” The answer? Psalm 119. It is, truly, a lengthy Psalm, but it is beautiful. There is more nuance to the psalm than we recognize on first read. Whoever wrote the psalm was a literary genius. The psalmist begins each section of eight verses with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, forming an acrostic with all 22 characters.

If we were to write a psalm with the 26 characters of the English alphabet, how would we compose the sections? Would we write an alphabet of grace? what would our poem of awe and wonder say from alpha to omega, beginning to end, from A to Z? Though our alphabet is fixed, the meanings we create with these jots and tittles are infinite.

Frederick Buechner writes in his book, The Sacred Journey, “God speaks to us through our lives, we often too easily say. Something speaks anyway, spells out some sort of godly or godforsaken meaning to us through the alphabet of our years, but often it takes many years and many further spellings out before we start to glimpse, or think we do, a little of what that meaning is. Even then we glimpse it only dimly, like the first trace of dawn on the rim of night, and even then it is a meaning that we cannot fix and be sure of once and for all because it is always incarnate meaning and thus as alive and changing as we are ourselves alive and changing.”

Buechner reminds us that the good news of incarnation and the scandal of resurrection mean that Christ is still alive and changing, just as we are living and progressing. In these remaining days of Lent, will you join me in writing an alphabet of grace? This exercise will mark a point on the timeline of our lives, a time and place that we can reference to see how Christ has led us on the wild and wondrous journey of Christian discipleship.

Peace abundant,

Nathan