April 2, 2016

“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Psalm 118:1ff

Love and be loved. That is the invitation of this Psalm; an open-ended prayer of praise and petition to give thanks and to love for all generations. “O give thanks to the Lord for he is good” — this is contextually relevant to every generation who recognizes G-d has delivered in the past, G-d delivers now, G-d’s love is present in the past, present and into the future, and this love will endure. All the saints have sung this song and will sing it well into the future. This is a prayer to be prayed in days of thanks, in days of fear, praying to encounter the G-d of love whose transformative love, mercy and grace is not just visible but accessible to all of us, forever and ever. Our only appropriate response is to give thanks always.

When was the last time you prayed a sincere prayer of thanksgiving? Let’s be careful not to move too quickly from the empty tomb of Easter to the Easter egg hunt, before we stop and give thanks.

On Easter we join the prayers of generations, giving thanks for personal deliverance, for universal deliverance, and for universal salvation. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

Psalm 118 was sung as the final word of the Passover festival. Jesus may have prayed it with his disciples just hours before his betrayal and death. Today, we need to engage this prayer with our minds, hearts, souls and bodies, living into the reality that the Lord is “Good all the Time, and All the Time the Lord is Good.”

Pastor Dave