I
spent a lot of time, this past summer, at Loch Leven, the wonderful camp and
conference center owned and operated by Bixby Knolls Christian Church and the
other congregations of the Pacific Southwest Region.
At
the end of July, I went up to counsel a week of youth camp. I returned from camp, but just a week later,
I was back up at Loch Leven for a meeting of the Rock the Loch planning team.
For
that meeting, I got a ride with a friend who was also on the planning team, and
for whatever reason, he got us there nearly two hours early. Well, you know me. Two hours at Loch Leven with nothing to do…
is a wonderful thing!
I
went for a walk. The camp was empty…
…and
quiet.
One
week earlier, it was the sounds of kids shouting and laughing and singing that
echoed through the camp, and that is truly a beautiful sound.
But
on this day, it was the sounds of nature that I heard, sounds that were also
beautiful: birds chirping…; leaves
rustling in the wind…; the creek, whispering gently…; and the sound of my own
heartbeat as I walked up the hill.
Eventually
I came to Inspiration Point. And yeah, I
probably should mention that you should never do what I did. You should never go for a hike by yourself,
even a hike as short as the one up to Inspiration Point. During a session of youth camp, I certainly
wouldn’t have done it. For safety, one
should always hike in a group of three or more.
Nevertheless,
in the cool, early morning light on that August day, the San Bernardino
Mountains had never looked better.
I
sat down on one of the benches and began to read. I had about a hundred books with me – on my
kindle, that is – and decided that this would be a good place to read one or
more of the psalms.
I
have two different Bibles on my kindle: the New Revised Standard Version which
we use most Sundays here in worship; it is an excellent, very accurate
translation used by most serious Bible scholars…;
I
also have the Common English Bible, which is a newer translation that is
easy-to-read, made by a group of scholars representing many different cultural
and ethnic backgrounds and representing a number of different faith traditions,
including the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Well,
I started reading the psalms in the Common English Bible. And I don’t know if it was the location, or
the fact that I was reading a translation that was still somewhat new to me;
but I started hearing the psalms as if for the first time, as if they were
brand new.
So
often, we read the Bible and it really does seem as if the words and thoughts
that we are reading are separated from us by a great distance of time and
geography … which, they are. These are
words written thousands of years ago, thousands of miles away.
Much
of my time is spent studying what life was like back then, because some things
in scripture just don’t make sense unless you understand the very different cultural context from
which they come.
But
sitting there at Inspiration Point, reading the psalms from the Common English
Bible, it seemed almost as if the words were written by a good friend, someone
who knows me well and who I know well, a person who I understand and who
understands me and what I’m going through.
And
one of the things I realized… is that the psalms really are cries of the heart. Maybe there’s just something timeless about
cries of the heart. But it’s that
emotional angst, that indescribable joy, that that deep sense of awe, that
longing, that sorrow, that despair, that is felt in every human heart.
Granted,
cries of the heart are not always theologically correct or appropriate. In moments of desperation and frustration,
for example, a psalmist might say something concerning those who are against
him, something like, “O God, destroy my enemies!”
Now,
we know that Jesus, and the apostle Paul, and the prophets, and scripture
generally offer much better, more compassionate ways of dealing with our
enemies. But the purpose of the psalms,
I realized, isn’t always to tell me how I should
act or how I should live. Often, the psalms are simply cries of the heart. They are expressions of emotion, written by
people in the midst of life’s varied experiences.
This
realization was liberating for me!
Because I can totally relate.
Sometimes, a person just needs to vent, to a friend, to a family member…
or to God. Every one of us experiences
times when we’re just overwhelmed by emotion, by anger or frustration or grief…
How wonderful it is to know that the writers of scripture – the psalmists –
experienced the exact same range of emotions that we ourselves experience.
I
mean, there are times when I – like everyone else – get so frustrated, so
angry, that I just want to scream and yell.
In those times when our words of frustration escape, we usually don’t
mean what we’re saying; our words are just expressions of frustration and
emotion.
And
sometimes, that’s how it is with the psalms.
Which I guess is why it seems to me that the psalms understand me.
So
today I begin a series of sermons on the psalms which I’m calling “Cries of the
Heart.” I’ve read through all 150 psalms
since that day 2 ½ months ago that I was inspired up on Inspiration Point, and
on each of the next five or six Sundays, I’ll share with you a particular “cry
of the heart” from the psalms.
Today’s
“cry of the heart” is wonder. And it’s a good one!
Wonder
is that feeling you get when you just can’t describe what you’re feeling.
Wonder
is when your heart sings.
Wonder
is when you realize that you are in the presence of something so great, so
mysterious, so awesome, that there is no way you can wrap your mind around it –
and you’re okay with that.
The
psalmist writes: “How majestic is your
name, O Lord! When I look up at your
skies, at what your fingers have made – the moon and the stars that you set
firmly in place – what are human beings that you think about them; what are
human beings that you pay attention to them?”
It
reminds me of a verse from the book of Proverbs that I stumbled upon a long
time ago, a verse that has stuck with me through the years. Proverbs 30:18 reads, “Three things are too
wonderful for me; four things I can’t figure out…”
First
of all, in ancient Hebrew poetry, it’s common to start out like this. The three things and four things are the
same, except the second line “one-ups” the first line. Rather than contradicting the first line, the
second line supports the first.
So
when it says there are things too wonderful, “things I can’t figure out”… the
author certainly doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that he can’t figure these
things out, that they are beyond his understanding. In fact, he thinks it’s wonderful that they are beyond understanding!
As
progressive Christians, we know that there are so many questions without
answers… and we’re okay with that. Well,
maybe not always. There are some times when an answer would
really be nice!
But
often, the questions themselves are wonderful.
They are “full of wonder.”
As
the proverb says:
Three
things are too wonderful for me; four that I can’t figure out: the way of an
eagle in the sky; the way of a snake on a rock; the way of a ship out on the
open sea; and the way of a man with a young woman.
Even
with our modern knowledge of thermal updrafts and aerodynamics, an eagle flying
in the sky is a wonderful thing to behold.
When I saw a pair of bald eagles flying high over Crescent Lake, Oregon,
the summer before last, I was filled with awe.
And
the way of a snake moving on a rock… well, never mind that; just walking seems
a miracle to me sometimes! A signal from
the brain sends a message to the muscles in the leg, causing them to contract
and relax, all the while maintaining balance in the body…
At
Disneyland a few years ago, I saw Asimo, the robot developed by Honda. Is it still there? By the way, don’t pronounce it “ASSimo,” as I
accidentally did; apparently the Disneyland cast members working with Asimo are
rather touchy about that.
Asimo can walk, it can go up stairs… it’s
pretty amazing. But it’s still nowhere
near as smooth and graceful as a human body.
Thich
Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who I got to see give a lecture in Pasadena last
night, has said that “the miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to
walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling
truly alive.”
Pondering
that, and contemplating it for a while, fills me with wonder.
And
the ship on the sea… and a young couple in love! Oh, what is this longing that we have for
another, that fills our hearts and binds
us to another!
It’s
truly wonderful.
The
psalmist says: “Give thanks to the one
who makes great wonders, who made the skies…, who shaped the earth…, the moon
and stars…” [136:4]
One
time I was working at a boy scout camp on Huntington Lake, spending several
weeks teaching scouts about nature and ecology and astronomy. And I also got to drive the boats which
basically looked like giant bathtubs (and were about as maneuverable), and which
were the only way to get to reach the camp.
And
sometimes, I’d pile one of those boats with one or two dozen scouts who were
working on their astronomy merit badge, and we’d go out to the middle of the
lake and lay on the benches that were spread across the bottom of the bathtub,
and look at the stars.
It
was amazing. Because the sky was so
clear, we could even see the Andromeda galaxy, which is the farthest thing a
human can see with the naked eye.
You
won’t ever see it in Long Beach. The sky
is never dark enough.
The
Andromeda galaxy is over a million light years away, which means that the light
from that galaxy takes over a million years to reach earth, travelling through
space at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second.
A
million years!
That
means that, looking up, what we saw was what the galaxy looked like over a
million years ago. We weren’t seeing the
present; we were seeing – literally – a million years into the past.
Woah!
“Before
the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the inhabited
world – from forever in the past to forever in the future, you are God. You return people to dust, saying, “Go back,
humans,” because in your perspective a thousand years are like yesterday past, like
a short period during the night watch.” [90:2-4]
And
yet, in my search for wonder, I don’t have to go a million light years away. Wonder is as close as my own heartbeat, my
own breath.
Even
as a child, I would sometimes wonder:
How is it that I am me? Here I am, seeing the world as Danny
Bradfield, a kid with a bunch of curly hair (yeah) growing up in Burbank,
California; out of the billions of people in the world, with billions of pairs
of eyes all seeing the world from a different point of view, how is it that I am seeing the world through these eyes, in this place, at this
particular time in history?
To
be honest, the questions kind of freaked me out. They still do; except that now, they also
fill me with wonder: wonder at things that are too mysterious, too marvelous,
for me to understand.
“God,
you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit down and when I stand up. Even from far away, you comprehend my
plans. You study my traveling and
resting.” You are thoroughly familiar
with all my ways… with everything that makes me me.
“That
kind of knowledge is too much for me!
It’s so high above me that I can’t fathom it…
“I give thanks to you that I am marvelously
made. Your works are wonderful, that I
know…. God, your plans are incomprehensible to me! Their total number is countless! If I tried to count them – they outnumber
grains of sand! If I came to the very end…
“If
I came to the very end, I’d still be
with you.” [139 – excerpts]
Thanks
be to God.
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