Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. – Psalm 100:2

Today's Scripture Reading (October 7, 2025): Psalm 100

Many years ago, I conducted an experiment. For one Sunday evening service during the summer, I thought we could simply sing the songs that meant something to us —the ones that we rarely sing in church anymore. And so, I gave the people of the church a chance to request a song, or an unlimited number of songs, that they wanted to sing on this summer evening. The requests began to pour in, which was a good sign. Some came from people who never made it to the evening edition of worship service, and I doubted whether they would make it on this Sunday evening either. The votes began to mount. It quickly became apparent that there were some favorites, requested several times by different people, or perhaps they were stuffing the ballot box or campaigning for their preferred candidates. I didn't really care which was true. The evening worship service came, and we gathered to sing the songs of the people. For this evening, the only criterion was that a group of people wanted to sing the song. A Christmas carol was equal to an Easter hymn, or just an old Gaither chorus that had fallen by the wayside. I wasn't going to preach. For a few of the songs, I would tell the story of the hymn writer or share a memory that I had of the song and what it meant to me, but I didn't choose any of them. All of the songs came on little slips of paper, requested by somebody else.

Late in the service, with only a couple of songs left, one older gentleman stood up with a question. Why had we packed one service with so many funeral songs? I looked down at the last two songs of the night that we were about to sing and recognized that they, too, could be considered funeral hymns. The simple answer was that we are singing these songs because they are the ones that people had chosen for this service. But there was also a more profound question. Why, in the middle of a beautiful summer, had we decided to sing so many songs that could also have been sung at any funeral?

Perhaps the most obvious answer is that our songs often focus on the next life rather than this one. "I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary," "My Jesus, I Love Thee," "In the Garden," and many others of our favorite songs focus on what comes after death. Sometimes, songs that deal with life are dismissed as being too shallow theologically for inclusion in church worship services.

Recently, I participated in a social media discussion about the merits of the Christian Hit "Good, Good Father" as a worship song. The song did not fare well in the debate, most feeling that theologically it did not measure up. And yet, it is a happy tune with a message that I believe we need to hear. Consider the chorus of the song.

You're a good, good father.
It's who you are, it's who you are, it's who you are
And I'm loved by you.
It's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am 

Some in the discussion thought that the song's lyrics were decidedly selfish, focusing more on the individual than on God. But I disagree. The message is not a complex one, but it is a necessary one and one that we need to hear. God is a Good Father; it is part of his essential character. And we are loved by him. We are the beloved, which again is a consequence of the nature of God. It is a joyful song that concentrates on our life here and now.

The Psalmist insists that joyful songs are always welcome in God's presence. Don't discard all those beautiful songs that remind us that our death is not the end. However, we also need to remember that God intends us to be joyful in this life; that our joy begins here and continues there. Our worship songs should reflect that fact. After all, we are the beloved of God. What more could we want?

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 102

Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel was among those who called on his name; they called on the LORD and he answered them. – Psalm 99:6

Today's Scripture Reading (October 6, 2025): Psalm 98 & 99

I admit, I can be captivated by lists of the G.O.A.T.'s (Greatest of All Time) in any area where you might wish to assemble one. I also recognize that these lists are very subjective. They are also subject to the ravages and changes of time. I recently conducted a survey to determine who people thought might be the G.O.A.T.s among American Presidents. It is a subject that I have explored a few times in my writing, usually because someone has compiled another list that has captured my attention. But I wanted to do a quick survey anyway. I didn't spend a lot of time searching, but basically just took the first three lists that I happened to see.

The first list that came to my attention was a fairly standard rendition of American Presidents. Taking top spot on the list was Abraham Lincoln (civil war and outlawing slavery), followed by George Washington (a Founding Father and the first President), with Theodore Roosevelt (known as a top Conservative advocate) rounding out the top three. It was not a bad list, although the reputation of George Washington has taken quite a hit in recent years because he was a slave owner. Personally, I think we need to be cautious when judging historical characters, ensuring we evaluate them within their own era rather than expecting them to live up to our modern social beliefs and mores. However, I know I am in the minority with that opinion.

The second list was very similar. It kept Abraham Lincoln as the G.O.A.T., followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the United States through the Depression and World War II, with Founding Father George Washington rounding out the top three.

The last list I reviewed was somewhat of an outlier, and it admittedly surprised me. It listed the top three Presidents as Ronald Regan (the Optimistic President), Bill Clinton (the Economy President), and Jimmy Carter (the Peace President). I didn't hate the list, and I think Jimmy Carter's reputation has been steadily rising since the four years he spent as President of the United States. However, I think I would need to be convinced that any of these presidents really deserved to be in the top three. I guess MAGA supporters compiled none of these lists, because Donald Trump was nowhere near the top three.

The Psalmist decides to compose his list of the Greatest Priests of All Time. If this Psalm was written during the time of King David, they might have been watching one of the greatest Priests of Judaism, a priest named Zadok. Zadok and his descendants became the standard for the priests of Israel. The Prophet Ezekiel praises the sons of Zadok because they were formidable opponents of paganism (Ezekiel 43-44). Ezra, one of the best priests of the exile era, was a descendant of Zadok.

But the Psalmist chooses Moses, Aaron, and Samuel as the Greatest Priests of all time. It is a good list. Moses, Aaron, and Samuel seemed to be of a class of their own. The Psalmist says that these three priests called on the name of God, and God answered them. It was something that the Psalmist didn't want his audience to miss. God responded to these priests in a very special and unique way, and they led Israel through difficult times, and deserved to be remembered.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 100

Rejoice in the LORD, you who are righteous, and praise his holy name. – Psalm 97:12

Today's Scripture Reading (October 5, 2025): Psalm 97

Fantasy author, James Branch Cabell (1879-1958), argued that "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true (James Branch Cabell). It might be a great definition of the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. Both the optimist and the pessimist look at the same world but come to different conclusions. The optimist sees and celebrates what is good about the world, while the pessimist sees and mourns all that is wrong and cannot see a future that is any better.

The Christian Church would seem to lean toward a pessimistic view. We look at the world and mourn all that is broken in it. However, we can't just leave it there. We seem to believe that everything is going to get worse; it has to because our theology says that Jesus will return when our world gets to its lowest low. We don't seem to question whether or not that is a correct attitude. Do things have to get worse? Can't they get better?

I must admit that as I read the Bible, I keep receiving a different message. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes this statement.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:13-16).

As I read these words from Jesus' famous sermon, I keep concluding that the world should be better because we, the Christian Church, are in it. So, is it? I think that for most of our history, we would have to say no. And part of the problem is where we place our focus. We seem to love bringing up everything that is wrong with the world. We are the pessimists who see a world full of ugliness and believe it will only get worse.

The Psalmist commands all who believe in God to "Rejoice in the Lord … and praise his holy name (Psalm 97:12). Instead of seeing all of the ways that this world is going down the drain, we should lift up our heads and see all that God is doing that is good in this world, and give him the praise. And not only see what is already good, but know that, because the Christian Church is both salt and light, the world can get even better.

So, rejoice in the God who is at work in our world. And recognize that because he is also at work in us, this old world has a bright future, and the Creator of this world is well worthy of our praise.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 98 & 99

The LORD is a God who avenges. O God who avenges, shine forth. – Psalm 94:1

Today's Scripture Reading (October 4, 2025): Psalm 94

I love the biblical story of Jonah. And my liking of the story has nothing to do with the whale or the big fish. In fact, I think the presence of the big fish in the story is actually just a big distraction that we don't need.

Let me paraphrase the story for you. Jonah is a prophet of God. And so, God does what he often seems to do with his prophets. He comes to Jonah with a message and a mission. God says that he needs someone to go to Nineveh and preach his message of love and forgiveness. If Nineveh does not change its ways, then the city would have to be destroyed, but it is evident that God doesn't want to leap to that conclusion. First, God decides to send Jonah.

However, Jonah doesn't want to go. And why would he? Nineveh was an evil city. One of the things that the Ninevites had perfected was how to remove the skin of a person while keeping them alive, at least for a while. You would die eventually, but you would die in great pain. Jonah is afraid to go, but maybe even more importantly, he wants God's wrath to fall on this evil city. He wants God to be the avenger of all the innocents who have died as a direct result of Nineveh and its Assyrian Empire.

Jonah decides to go to the Southern Coast of Spain instead of Nineveh. If you have decided to run away from God, the South of Spain is a good place to go. The South of Spain is a beautiful place to be, but it also exists near what the ancients believed was the edge of the world. It was as far from Nineveh as Jonah could imagine going. I question the reason why Jonah decided to sail to Spain. The seas were a place of chaos, often recognized as under the control of the gods, but that is what Jonah chose to do.

Enter the famous big fish. A storm comes up; obviously, the gods are displeased. Jonah knows with whom God is displeased. So, he volunteers to be thrown overboard. However, the sailors are principled men, and so they throw everything else they could think of, including their freight, first. But then they toss Jonah over the side of the boat. And immediately, the waves calm, and the ship is no longer in danger.

For Jonah, things aren't quite as bright. A large fish swallows Jonah, and the prophet spends the next three days and three nights inside it. Finally, the fish vomits Jonah onto dry land; I guess he didn't taste very good. Jonah cleans himself up and does what he should have done in the first place; he goes to Nineveh to preach the message God had given to him. The people of Nineveh are receptive to the message, and they change their ways. As a result, God delays his wrath for a season, which doesn't make Jonah happy. One of the key passages in the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, is found in Jonah 4. At this point in the story, Nineveh has been saved, and Jonah is sulking.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. ² He prayed to the Lord, "Isn't this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4:1-3)

Jonah wanted an avenging God, just like the Psalmist, and if we are honest, so do we. But God comes to us and reminds us that he is a gracious and compassionate God. Sometimes that is good news because we are Nineveh and we need that compassion. Sometimes we are Jonah and are being sent to people who need to hear a compassionate message.

The Psalmist wants God to be an avenging God. But that is a last resort. God is patient, kind, gracious, and compassionate. A God who wants no one to fall or fail. And he seems willing to keep sending his prophets (us) into a world that needs that message, whether we want to be the instrument of that compassion or not. It is a message that even the Psalmist needed to hear.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 97

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. – Psalm 92:12-13

Today's Scripture Reading (October 3, 2025): Psalm 92 & 93

I love the story of the Ragman imagined by Walter Wangerin. Wangerin tells a tale of a ragman that the storyteller saw one Friday morning. The Ragman's voice rang out loud and clear. "Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!"

It was a fantastic sight because this man stood six feet four inches tall, and his arms were thick, like tree limbs, firm and muscular, and his eyes were full of intelligence. Why would a man like this spend his time as a ragman in the inner city?

Soon, the Ragman found a woman on her porch, crying into her handkerchief. But the Ragman stopped when he saw the woman. His voice spoke gently. "Give me your rag and I will give you another." The Ragman took the handkerchief from her eyes and gave her a new crisp white piece of cloth. But then something unexpected happened. He placed the woman's dirty handkerchief over his own eyes, and he began to weep while the woman was left without a tear.

After a while, this Ragman came upon a child whose head was wrapped in a bloody bandage. The Ragman took a yellow hat from his cart and offered it to the little girl. "I'll trade you," he said. The child loosened the bandage, gave it to him, and took the yellow bonnet for her own head. I couldn't believe what happened next; the wound went with the bandage. Now it was the Ragman's head that bled, and the child was healed.

Next, the Ragman met a man leaning against a pole. The Ragman asked the man, "Do you have a job?" The man looked at the Ragman as if he were crazy and showed him the right sleeve of his jacket, which had no arm. The Ragman smiled. "Give me your jacket and I will give you mine." The trade was made, but the arm of the Ragman went with the jacket. Now the man had two arms, while the Ragman only had one. 

The Ragman found a drunk sleeping under an old army blanket, but the Ragman took the army blanket and left new clothes. Now the Ragman was weeping uncontrollably, bleeding profusely from his head, and pushing his cart with only one arm.

He came to a landfill. He cleared a space and lay down. He used a handkerchief and a jacket as a pillow. He covered his body with an army blanket. And there, he died.

There I cried until I fell asleep. I slept through the rest of Friday and through all of Saturday. I was awakened on Sunday by a bright, demanding light. There stood the Ragman, folding the blanket. He had a scar on his head, but he was healthy and alive. And all of the rags he had gathered were clean and shining.

I went to him and introduced myself by name. Then, I took off my clothes and asked the Ragman to dress me. And he dressed me. He put new rags on me, the Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ.

The Psalmist says the righteous will flourish like a cedar in Lebanon. There were cedars in Israel, but the ones in Lebanon were stronger. Like the cedar, what matters is where the righteous person is planted. If we are planted in the House of the Lord, if the Ragman has dressed us, we will flourish. But it matters where we are planted.

Some might be offended by what I am about to say, but please stick with me. The House of the Lord, the Church, is the trash heap on which the Ragman died. But if our roots are in that landfill, then we are raised with Christ, clothed by the Ragman, and growing strong and straight because of the Ragman's presence in our lives.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 94

For you have been my hope, Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth. – Psalm 71:5

Today's Scripture Reading (October 2, 2025): Psalm 71

The Kobayashi Maru. Every Star Trek fan recognizes the name. In the fictional Star Trek universe, the name symbolizes the "no-win situation" that tests the character of a new Starfleet cadet. Of course, Captain Kirk does not believe in "no-win situations," so he cheated; the Enterprise's Captain changed the parameters of the test so that there was a way out. In Kirk's mind, the test itself was a cheat because it did not allow for a win. According to Captain Kirk's logic, how could you cheat something that was already cheating? All he felt he was doing was responding with the same integrity that the test was giving to him. However, to the rest of the Star Trek Universe, Kirk cheated.

I don't often disagree with the fictional Star Ship Captain, but here I do think that Captain Kirk might have been wrong. In real life, we do face no-win situations. Oh, we often deny it, just like fictional James Tiberius Kirk. When things go wrong, we usually attribute the failure to something we have done or a sin we have committed. It is repeatedly the question that I hear from friends during rough times: What did I do to deserve this? And sometimes we can pinpoint that something, but sometimes there doesn't seem to be anything that has been done wrong. Sometimes, stuff just happens.

We are not entirely sure when this Psalm was composed. There is internal evidence that the Psalm was written late in the life of the Psalmist because he mentions the sins of his youth (vs. 7). Traditionally, the Psalm has been attributed to David, and the rebellion of Absalom might have sparked it. If it was Absalom's rebellion that was the stress point behind the Psalm, then the sin that sparks David's rough time is his sin with Bathsheba. But it might have been something else that lies at the bottom of these penitential words from the Psalmist.

Whatever the reason for the Psalm, the Psalmist makes it clear that God is his hope. Regardless of what is going on, the Psalmist is not someone who exists without hope. Since his youth, his hope was not in his talents, abilities, or circumstances. If there is hope for the future of the Psalmist, he believes that his hope is only in God. Whether the tough time the Psalmist is experiencing is of his own making or simply a case of "stuff happens," the Psalmist relies on God to protect him, secure in the knowledge that even if this is the Kobayashi Maru no-win situation, God is still in control. And with God, even a no-win situation has hope at the end of the road.     

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 92 & 93

Come and see what God has done, his awesome deeds for mankind! – Psalm 66:5

Today's Scripture Reading (October 1, 2025): Psalm 66 & 67

One of the problems with all religions is that there are groups that seem to believe in the same things that others do, and yet they take the faith in a radically different direction. The existence of Islamic radicals who want to act with violence does not mean that every Mosque, Shaykh (authenticated teacher of the Quran), or Marabout (spiritual leader) is teaching the same things. And some Islamic leaders argue that the violence that sometimes seems so familiar actually isn't a fundamental mark of Islamic belief.

Christianity suffers in the same way. Some Christians seem to believe in violence against those they would label the infidels, while others are tied up in the idea of being righteous or even perfect. Some would even argue that I am perverting Christianity through my teaching of love. My problem is that I see love all the way through the Bible. Jesus argued that all of the Law and prophets hang on the dual concepts of loving God with all of our being and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:40). As a Christian, I am commanded to want the best for you, just as I want the best for me. If you can fulfill these commands, then you will keep all of the demands of the Law and the instructions of the Prophets. Live a life dominated by love, and you won't have to worry about the requirements of righteousness because love will have already taken you past that hurdle.

For me, that is the central tenet of Christianity. Love. I have mentioned to those around me that our priority has to be love. If we can perfect love, then we can turn to all of the other demands of the Law and the prophets and see what we can do, but first, we have to learn to love. However, I also suspect that once we learn to love, the rest of the demands of the Law and the Prophets won't be as important to us as they might seem to be now.

If that is attractive to you, then all I can say is find a church that believes in love and come and see. It might take some research, but it will be worth it. We are out there, and all we want to do is love you with the love that Christ has given to us.

"Come and see" is also a concept that is central to our faith. The Psalmist uses those words here. As I read the Psalmist, my imagination turns to a conversation between Philip and Nathaniel in John 1. Philip had seen Jesus and was convinced that he was the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and the one that the Prophets said was yet to come. And Philip says that this man's name was Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph.

Nathaniel's reply is quick. Nazareth! Can anything good come out of Nazareth? I have heard the stories of this Nazareth, and nothing good ever comes from there. To this assertion, Philip simply replies, "Come and see." (Paraphrased from John 1:43-46.) 

You can sit in front of your computer and complain about what the Christian Church does or doesn't do, or you can come and see. It is up to you. And I get it, not all churches are the same; there are some churches that I can't identify with because they refuse to love. But churches that believe in love exist. So the invitation of the Psalmist remains. I invite you to "Come and see."

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 71