Today’s Scripture Reading (June 29,
2014): Psalm 107
Just over a
decade ago I attended a Youth Conference in Downtown Toronto. One of the
challenges of the week was in trying to teach a number of rural youth about the
challenges of living in the downtown area of a major North American City. And
every day as we walked toward the Air Canada Center where our main sessions
were being held, we walked through the bedrooms of a number of the street
people in the area. These were the people that lived largely ignored on the
streets of the city.
We stayed in
the downtown area for just over a week, and slowly there was a change. I began
to see muffins and pieces of fruit left on the top of neatly folded blankets on
a street corner. I saw a number of youth sitting and just talking with the
people who lived on the street. In their innocence, they saw in these people
the treasure that I think most of missed. It was a great week, but I remember wondering
exactly what it was that the street people thought about their new found
friends. They were a people who were normally scorned and rejected, but now for
a period of ten days they found a new acceptance in the eyes of teens from
rural North American towns who didn’t know that these people were ignored by
most of society.
After ten
days in downtown Toronto, as the buses carrying the teens and their sponsors
out of the downtown area toward the airport and the planes waiting to carry
them home, I discovered the answer to my question. As the buses started to move
out of the downtown area, one of the homeless men stood with a sign made out of
a scrap piece of cardboard. The sign read “Thank you for the food – but most of
all thank you for the conversation.” The sign seemed to scream the message - thank
you for noticing us. For a moment in time, these people had found a measure of
redemption. And when we find redemption, even in the smallest amount, every
fibre of our being cries out with thanks.
And this is
the cry of the Psalmist. It is a cry that could have been expressed about a God
who had released Israel from their bondage in Egypt, but that was ancient
history. It is more likely that the Psalmist is marvelling about the hand of
God which had released them from captivity in Babylon. In the moment that the
people of God were below being noticed, in the day that Israel found herself
homeless, God noticed them and brought them home. And the Psalmist cries out
the message – those who have been redeemed need to say so – the redeemed need
to say thank you to the Redeemer who has seen them and brought them home.
But there is
also an echo of something else – something that the Psalmist didn’t know. And
that is that one day there would be another redeemer - one who would see us, speak
to us, and buy us back from those that would hold us as slaves. The Psalmist
speaks of the ultimate redeemer, the Messiah, and encouraged all those who had
known that redemption to speak of it – so that others might find that
redemption for themselves.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm
126
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