Kipling Poem

Kipling Poem

Jeff Lampl

March 30, 2016

In my opinion Rudyard Kipling nailed . . . .

the meaning of Easter is his short poem, When earth’s Last Picture is Painted.  Here it is for you to read and then I’ll comment on why I think he gets Easter so right.  

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it - lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen Shall put us to work anew.

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from - Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one will work for the money, and no one will work for the fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

First, “lie down for an aeon or two” reflects the Bible’s teaching that when believers die, they go to paradise/heaven/God’s space/the presence of God for a time of rest.

Second,”shall put us to work anew” reflects the almost incomprehensible thought that you and I will still have work to do in the next life.  And that work will be creative.  It will be like an artist at work on a painting, never bored, always finding the source of his inspiration from God and from the eternal vision that sustained the saints.   I’m no artist, but I feel certain that each of us according our particular giftedness will work in a way that is exhilarating, creative, joyful, energizing and at doing something that matters

Third, that “inconsolable secret” in each of us, that unspoken desire to be noticed, to be noticed by God (isn’t being noticed by dad or mom the signature desire of every child?) will be met.   God will be our father lavishing his praise and love on us as we do what each of us was created to do.  Not only that, there’s no competition, comparison or boasting!   That will be real cool!

Fourth, “things as they are”.  I love that.   Right now we see dimly as in a mirror.  But one day we will see clearly.  Right now we live in the shadowlands, but one day we’ll live in the full light.   No more distortions, only reality.  

Finally, I don’t think the poem is complete.   The “aeons” in heaven with God are temporary.   One day, one great day, Jesus will return to earth, bringing heaven with him, and the great merger of heaven and earth (no anti-trust laws can stop this!), the greatest wedding the world has ever seen, will take place and then the scenes that were on “canvas” in heaven, will be translated into God inspired actions on the new earth.

What do you think?

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1 Corinthians 15:58

1 Corinthians 15:58

Jeff Lampl

I have often wondered what the connection is between . . . . . .

1^st Corinthians 15:58   “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  

. . . . .and everything that comes before it, where the apostle describes how bodily resurrection works.

How does it follow that since I’ll be resurrected to new bodily life one day I should conclude that everything I do now matters?  

Why would it not be the exact opposite?  If everything I do now will be done away with and then replaced, then why would anything I do now matter except in terms of getting myself and others into heaven?

Here’s the crucial answer that I learned way too late.

What the Bible tells us  is that the things and people of this world  will not be replaced, rather they will resurrected, renewed, and restored which is exactly what Peter said at Pentecost (Acts 3:21).  

Once we get our “r” words right, we realize that if God is planning to do for all of creation (not just people – “All things”) what He did for Jesus, and once we learn the cost to Him of doing this (the cross), then we realize that everything must matter a great deal to God.   

In other words, God isn’t doing away with people, or the material world or nature or work or family or relationships or learning or anything (other than the corruption of God’s good world) at all, rather all of it matters so much to him that he can’t do anything but keep it, fix it up, and restore it and us to mint condition.  

Kathy tells me that I am a hoarder.  Even I can’t throw away things that have meaning to me!  But God doesn’t just keep it all, he restores it!

Therefore, if/since this is true, I have to ask myself, “how then should I approach my day to day life now?”  Here’s my answer: 

1.  I may think my job, a certain person, littering, the words I say, etc. don’t matter.   But I am wrong because they matter to God.   I may think my efforts to help ungrateful people are wasted and in vain, but I am wrong.  So much stuff that I think doesn’t matter or is a waste do matter and are not a waste to God. 

2.   If I’m a believer that means I’ve joined team Jesus and as a member of his team everything that I am tasked with matters because the object of that task matters to Jesus.   If he’s a restorer of all things that means I am too, regardless of how big a waste of time any of my tasks look to me.    When I talk to you for example, it is my job to talk to you in a way that brings God’s love and hope to you.   If I am doing a job, I must do that job or project in such a way that it is done with excellence, that it is done with the purpose of being a good for others, and that it is done, as much as it depends on me, for the welfare of human beings.

3.  Finally, when I act, think and relate as a member of team Jesus, that means that no matter how much of what I do or say feels like a complete waste, it’s not.   I am wrong to let myself think that.   Because Jesus is making all things new and because it is he working through me that means that “nothing I do for the Lord is ever wasted or in vain”.

4.   A fourth reason is that full restoration of all things to their intended purpose and means the removed all flaws, sin, and evil.  This does mean that people who reject God’s forgiveness and cleansing will not enter God’s New World.   They will have excluded themselves.  These are people we encounter every day of our lives.  It is a reality for every believer that in our interactions with all people we are either helping to move them toward an eternal destiny of either glory or horror.  This is the burden of every believer, what C.S. Lewis called the “Weight of Glory”.

In short, there is no one on planet earth, no one who ever lived, no matter how great in the eyes of the world, who necessarily has a more meaningful, purposeful, powerful, effective, and blessed life than you, if you are on team Jesus.

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Easter!

EASTER

Jeff Lampl
Sunday, March 27, 2016

Happy Easter!  Today is the greatest day ever in the History of the world! 
Please . . . .

Take some quiet time to reflect on Psalm 22, an Easter Psalm composed hundreds of years before Easter!  

Do you notice anything in verses 1- 21 that remind you of Jesus’ death on the cross?   Notice the ‘about face’ in vs. 22.   What caused it?  Finally, do you notice any “mission accomplished” verses from 22 to 31?

God Bless you on resurrection Sunday!

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
² My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.^[b]

³ Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.^[c]
4 In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
⁵ To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

⁶ But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
⁷ All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
⁸ “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

⁹ Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
¹⁰ From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

¹¹ Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

¹² Many bulls surround me;
    strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
¹³ Roaring lions that tear their prey
    open their mouths wide against me.
¹⁴ I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.
¹⁵ My mouth^[d] is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

¹⁶ Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce^[e] my hands and my feet.
¹⁷ All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.
¹⁸ They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.

¹⁹ But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
    You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
²⁰ Deliver me from the sword,
    my precious life from the power of the dogs.
²¹ Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
    save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

²² I will declare your name to my people;
    in the assembly I will praise you.
²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
    Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
²⁴ For he has not despised or scorned
    the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
    but has listened to his cry for help.

²⁵ From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
    before those who fear you^[f] I will fulfill my vows.
²⁶ The poor will eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek the Lord will praise him—
    may your hearts live forever!

²⁷ All the ends of the earth
    will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    will bow down before him,
²⁸ for dominion belongs to the Lord
    and he rules over the nations.

²⁹ All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
    all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
    those who cannot keep themselves alive.
³⁰ Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord.
³¹ They will proclaim his righteousness,
    declaring to a people yet unborn:
    He has done it!           Psalm 22

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Easter, Brussels and Evil

Easter, Brussels and Evil

Jeff Lampl
March 26, 2016

The Bible tells that Jesus . . . .

came to destroy the works of the devil.   The horror of the bombings in Brussels is difficult for most of us to reconcile with Easter.

Christianity tells us that on the cross Jesus defeated the trifold powers of sin, evil and death.  So, how can that be true and the Brussels bombings be true at the same time?

The main message of Easter is that what God did for Jesus by resurrecting him from the dead, God is doing and will have done for every square inch and every split second of the universe, that is it will all be resurrected, restored, and renewed.   This cannot not happen.  That is the message of Christianity.  

The most evil of events ever to have occurred, including 9/11 and Brussels this week will be used by God in the restoring of the world.   God doesn’t create evil, but he uses it.   In the end the worst of all evil will find itself simply a pawn in God’s hands. 

Where was Jesus at the American Airlines counter and in the subway car in Brussels.  He was there, dying with those who died, providing help for the wounded.   But it was “Friday”.   Sunday is on its way.

Where was he when the deceived young men were planning and perpetrating in the attacks?   He was allowing them to exercise their will on behalf of an evil power, against God himself (albeit unwittingly), and against others.  In other words, God allowed them the same freedom to choose evil that he grants us when we, even knowingly, choose to ignore God and instead insult, lie, manipulate others, seek our own well-being at the expense of others.  

I sometimes wonder if the difference between me and the worst of the worst people on earth is only a difference of degree.   Do you recall how Jesus said that insulting others is the same as committing murder?   What if Jesus really meant that?

Here is a letter about God and evil that I wrote to the church family years ago.   I hope that it helps you process how to live in our world where evil has been defeated, but not yet finally removed. 

Suffering         How can a Good God allow evil and suffering?

God made a good world in which He created Human beings in His Image.   This means primarily that humans have been created with free will, the freedom to live in concert with the reality of a God centered universe or the freedom choose self-centeredness.   It is not difficult to imagine the impact of 7 billion people on society and nature.   To destroy evil and suffering would mean to destroy people.   God is patient, will not withdraw free will, and works at every moment to draw people out of their sin an into trusting Him.   It’s a messy process.  In a broken world, broken things happen.   Meanwhile God is working from below and from the margins to repair the world

Dear Church Family,

Some of you are teachers and leaders.  Many of you are parents.  All of you will need to deal sooner or later with the question of how a good God can allow bad things to happen.

Following are a few pastoral and biblical perspectives which I encourage you to consider as you communicate with your children, students, colleagues and friends about why tragedy happens.

1.  God didn’t do it.  He doesn’t bring about tragedies.  He allows them.  In a broken world broken things happen.  God   prefers to give us free will as opposed to creating us as puppets on a string.  This allows therefore for human error, failure, sin, brokenness and pain.

2.  God never wastes a hurt.  He is totally and only good, and He has a future and a hope for every person, none excluded. (see Jeremiah 29:11)  All any of us needs to do is to accept it, believe it, and follow Jesus, the One who puts it all back together.

3.  There are no satisfactory answers to the question “why.”  The jar will never comprehend the mind of the potter. (see Isaiah 29:16)  Most of the  answers that we give to the question “why” end up being trite, or wrong, or a misrepresentation of God.

4.    Avoid seeking blame or “justice.”  As painful and difficult as it is to do (for some almost impossible) forgiveness heals,       blame kills.  No amount of human “justice seeking” will heal.  The legal system may need to come into play at times,        but extreme effort is required to dislodge seeds of bitterness from the heart.  They grow and poison and eventually kill.

5.      Be real.  The “why” question, although unanswerable, is great as a cry of anguish.  The Psalms are full of all the contradictory human emotions of pain, hope, anger, sadness, joy, bitterness and love.  You can openly bring it all to God.  When you’re real God has “raw” material to work with and heal.

6.      Talk with your children and friends.

7.     Pray and never give up.  (Luke 18:1)  God heals.  Those who have not been physically healed will have been healed in the next life.  They are now with God in Paradise.  Let’s thank God that you and I can have that healing too.

But do pray for physical healing, also for spiritual and emotional strength for the family and friends of those facing pain.  God has His best in store for all of us and prayer makes a huge difference.  Sometimes our biggest failure is that we stop praying too soon.  Where we are today is not the end of the story.  God has good chapters for each of our lives, which He has yet to write.

8.     “Spiritual warfare” is a biblical metaphor and it is real.  Evil exists as does the “evil one”.  There is a force (Jesus      named it Satan) outside of ourselves which seeks to destroy God’s creation and that includes people.  God has conclusively dealt with it on the cross, which means resurrection and restoration, not defeat, are the end of the story.

9.  Yet the best way to frame suffering is not to focus on the evil but on what God is doing through it all.  What I see is   God turning many, many of us more and more to dependence on Him, into deeper and more intense prayer, and into a deeper personal experience of Him. That is a fantastic outcome.  It is the outcome that, of all outcomes, is most fully life-giving.

 10.  None of us is guaranteed a tomorrow.  Assuming we’ll be here tomorrow is presumption. Each of us needs to learn better to live in the “now” and be genuinely grateful for it.

11.   For me, the most important thing is that all those who have allowed Jesus to connect them to Himself will live again, indeed will see each other again.  Each of us can have a reunion with loved ones we have lost.  “If for this life only we have hope . . . . we are a pretty sorry lot.”  I Corinthians 15:19.    The longer I live the more true I know this to be.

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Good Friday

Good Friday

Jeff Lampl
March 25, 2016

Friday was a bad day for Jesus.   He . . . . .

was crucified. 

Friday was a bad day for his followers.  Their dreams of a victorious future as best friends of the new King and dignitaries in the new Kingdom of Israel were shattered. 

Friday was a bad day for Jesus’s mother.   Can you imagine watching that happen to your son?

Friday was a good day for the Romans.   They got rid of another menace, another would be disturber of the famed Pax Romana, the Roman peace, achieved of course through fear, intimidation and brutality.

Friday was a good day for religion.   This disturber of two thousand years of tradition and law was finally and permanently taken out.   Who did he think he was anyway?

It was Friday . . . . . but Sunday was coming*.

Have you ever had a really, really, really bad Friday, or week of Fridays, or month or year or years of Fridays?

Even though it might still be “Friday” for you, according to the bible Sunday’s coming.  

But before Sunday came Saturday.   Saturday was the Sabbath.  All of Jerusalem kept the Sabbath.   They did their rituals, kept Torah, and sought the peace of God.   Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, 600 years prior to this Friday, wrote that religious leaders are prone to settle for false peace, declaring “peace, peace, where there is no peace”

Maybe religious leaders have disappointed you too.  You’ve been told about things to do, to think, to believe, to choose to believe, to meditate on, religious practices to get right, to repent, to forgive, and none of it has helped.   They’ve all just given you their own version of the promise of peace and you’re still despairing.

Maybe your life has been a life of religious Saturdays.

It was Saturday but Sunday was coming. 

Sunday came.  

Maybe it’s something like this:   how does Christmas Day rearrange your entire life in the month of December?   It does doesn’t it?  At least it rearranges my life.   Presents to buy, parties to attend, family gatherings to plan, decorations to put up, people to care for who are alone, and on it goes.   The fact that Christmas Day has come in the past, will come each December, changes things.

It's Friday but Sunday was coming. 

Sunday did come.

So, as Christmas rearranges your December, describe how Easter (God doing for the world what God did for Jesus “on Easter”) rearranges not just March, but your entire life. 

I find that to be a very, very good question for each of us answer.

*this line comes from a famous sermon by Tony Campolo

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Peace

PEACE

Megann Graf

(written 3/23/16)

Eight years ago today, Easter was at its earliest date in over 100 years.  March 23, 2008.  God must’ve known I needed this message of hope and new life a little early this year (yes, I know Easter is not determined by my life, just roll with me for the sake of a good story!)  I’ll go back a couple to days to tell you how it began…

We had our second baby, a boy named Owen, on March 4, 2008.  He was such a chill little guy.  Then on his 17^th day on this earth, he got really cranky.  I assumed this just meant that my hopes of having an easy going 2^nd child were dissipating, and this would be our new norm.  But it was a little strange.  Later that evening he started throwing up.  It was a bright green vomit, we knew it didn’t look right, so we called the pediatrician and were told if it happened again, we should go to the ER.  It did, and off we went.  It was the night of Good Friday.

  

Turns out Owens small intestine had never attached in utero, and when it had flipped, it twisted and then caused an obstruction, which led to him throwing up bile.  We were told in the wee hours of the morning that he needed immediate surgery.  We spent Friday night into Saturday morning waiting for a 4 hour surgery to be completed.  When it was, we had good news.  He was going to be fine.  He would be in some pain for several days, but they were able to save all of the intestine.  That was a very good thing, they said.   The rest was a waiting game, for when his bowels would start to “wake up. “ He was hooked up to some machines and monitors and so while we were able to see him, we couldn’t hold him.

Mike and I went home that Saturday night to rest and I remember getting my daughter all ready for Easter the next morning for my parents to take her to spend the day with her cousins.  We headed back to the hospital to see Owen.  Today, the nurse said I could hold him.  (Insert a really big mama smile here!) .  The only thing I wanted to be able to do was to hold him.  I wanted him to feel my love.  I remember thinking how ironic this was to be happening on Easter.  Certainly, in no way at the magnitude of what Jesus’ mother must have endured, but just a small glimpse of the agony she must’ve felt that day.  No mother wants to see her child suffer.  And yet, there I was, in the NICU of a hospital looking at mother after mother watch their child in pain.   I remember talking to one whose child was there for yet another heart surgery.  And there were some, I knew, would likely never see the outside of a hospital.  Our twelve day stay would have been welcomed by so many.

Just this past week, I spoke with a friend who this very day, is remembering the day her son did pass away.  This same anniversary that I can remember holding my son again, is the same day she had to stop holding hers.  I marvel at her strength and faith despite having had the worst happen. (And that is a gross understatement.)

How do we find peace in all of this? 

“Peace is not the absence of affliction, but the presence of God.” 

I know the only thing I did for the 4 hours of my sons surgery was pray.  I feel certain that the only thing my friend did during her son’s hospitalization was pray.  And God was with us both.  We’ll never know why the answers to our prayers were different, but I know we both agree that God was with us.

As we prepare to celebrate our Risen Savior, I pray that we would come to recognize His presence in every situation.  Not just the bad ones, but especially in the good ones, because far too often that is when we dismiss Him the most.  The presence of God is our ticket to peace.  God wants us to feel His love too.  But sometimes we have too many of life’s machines (i.e. distractions) hooked up to us and we prevent Him from getting His arms fully around us, though He is always desperately trying.  One thing is certain, in this world there will always be troubles.   Why else would Jesus have gone to such an extreme to save us?  I just hope I’m connected more to God than anything else so that I can feel His love and His peace in all situations. 

Maundy Thursday

Maundy Thursday

Jeff Lampl
March 23, 2016

What does Maundy mean anyway?  It means . . .  .

“command”.   The word “maundy” comes from the Latin world “mandatus” from which we get the word, “mandate” or command.  It refers to the day of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the day on which he washed their feet and then gave them a brand new commandment, one which turned everything upside down.  Here it is;

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”      John 13:34-35

Previously everyone knew the old command, “love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself”.   When you think about this “old” commandment, repeated by Jesus in Matthew 22 as the second part of the “Great Commandment”,  you will notice that the reference point for knowing how to love your neighbor is  yourself. 

Notice how Jesus ups the ante.   How I want to be loved is now no longer the benchmark for how well I am to love others.  I am too flawed a creature to be the reference point or benchmark for anything.   And my “neighbor” is far too valuable a creature to base how well they are loved on my evaluation of love.    If it’s up to me I might think, “if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for them,”  or “this is how I like to be loved, therefore that’s how I’ll love them” while being totally oblivious to how that other person needs loved.  Further and more importantly, Jesus defined love with his sacrificing himself for others.   He redefined love from, “I’ll treat others as I wish to be treated”  to “I must treat others as Jesus treats them (service. Humility, forgiveness, all the cost of my own needs). 

Tomorrow evening we’ll gather for a Maundy Thursday remembrance, a reminder of how Jesus loves us.   We’ll eat together, then worship together.   As we share communion together we will take into ourselves the bread and Juice, symbolically, the body and blood and Jesus, so that we too can be Jesus to others.  

It’s an amazing story isn’t it?   Jesus, the creator, sustainer and ruler of the universe, teaches that the way to live is by dying, that the way to get is to give, that they way to purpose, meaning, and a vibrant life is by way of giving all that up.   When we lose our live for the sake of God and others we gain it. 

Where is it in your life you need to love another, not as you would want to be loved, rather as Jesus has loved you?

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Finding Peace

Finding Peace

Jeff Lampl

I have learned three things about finding peace. . . .

First, I have learned that Jesus came to bring peace and if he is indeed ruling the earth right now, then He is currently working in each of us right now, probably not to simply give us peace, rather to offer it as a something that we can choose by deciding to believe Him. 

Notice this passage from Zechariah, which Jesus most certainly knew, and which he intentionally acted out on the day that we call palm Sunday.   Notice how these verses combine righteousness, victory, humility and peace.  When we Americans combine victory with peace we generally think of military build-up to keep us safe.   This passage pictures the Messiah achieving peace through weakness, actually disarming chariots, bows and warhorses.   This is peace not through strength, but through the humility of God.

"Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
    righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
¹⁰ I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
    and the warhorses from Jerusalem,
    and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
    His rule will extend from sea to sea
    and from the River^[b] to the ends of the earth."  Zechariah 9:9-10

I have come to believe and actually trust that Jesus humbly entered Jerusalem to die for the sin of the world.   This is huge.   It’s not that or anyone else I got right with God, but that through Jesus God got right with me.   It’s still a painfully difficult thing to believe, but in believing that I have astonished moments of being at peace, being at peace with God, the prerequisite for any other kind of real peace.

I have come to believe, based on Jesus’s resurrection and ascension that He is now ruling every split second and every square inch of planet earth, and he is ruling it in such a way, regardless of what I see, believe or understand, that every wrong is being made right and everything evil ever done is in the process of being undone.   My sin, failures, and incompetencies cannot prevent his doing this.   That truth gives me peace.

I have come to believe that that last three lines of verse 10 above are true, that they are a preview of the big message of the bible that this earth will be restored, that everything will be made right, and that everyone who is willing will find themselves living eternally in a redeemed world.  My favorite peace evoking thought about this is that this cannot not happen.

In short my peace comes from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“God cannot give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because it doesn’t exist”   C.S. Lewis

“Christ Himself is our peace”  Ephesians 2:14

“Lord, I will stop begging you to bring me peace supernaturally, instead I will practice believing;  believing that you are good, that you are making all things right even when, especially when I can’t see it.   Lord, I chose to believe and trust you as the Father in whom I have confidence as the Father of my children, as the Father who leads me beside still waters and restores my soul, as the powerful king who is undoing all wrongs and will finish the job.  Lord, today, at this moment I rest in that.  Amen”

Psalm 118

Psalm 118

Today is celebrated by . . . . .  Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians all over the world (the Orthodox celebrate calendar is different) as “Palm Sunday” the day that the “Prince of Peace” marches into Jerusalem on a Donkey.  I encourage you to read the following Psalm slowly and let God give you his peace.  It is generally thought that this is one of the Psalms that Jesus and his disciple sang at their “last supper” meal together. 

Psalm 118

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

² Let Israel say:
    “His love endures forever.”
³ Let the house of Aaron say:
    “His love endures forever.”
⁴ Let those who fear the Lord say:
    “His love endures forever.”

⁵ When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord;
    he brought me into a spacious place.
⁶ The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?
⁷ The Lord is with me; he is my helper.
    I look in triumph on my enemies.

⁸ It is better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust in humans.
⁹ It is better to take refuge in the Lord
    than to trust in princes.
¹⁰ All the nations surrounded me,
    but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
¹¹ They surrounded me on every side,
    but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
¹² They swarmed around me like bees,
    but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns;
    in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
¹³ I was pushed back and about to fall,
    but the Lord helped me.
¹⁴ The Lord is my strength and my defense^[a];
    he has become my salvation.

¹⁵ Shouts of joy and victory
    resound in the tents of the righteous:
“The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!
¹⁶     The Lord’s right hand is lifted high;
    the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”
¹⁷ I will not die but live,
    and will proclaim what the Lord has done.
¹⁸ The Lord has chastened me severely,
    but he has not given me over to death.
¹⁹ Open for me the gates of the righteous;
    I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
²⁰ This is the gate of the Lord
    through which the righteous may enter.
²¹ I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
    you have become my salvation.

²² The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
²³ the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes.
²⁴ The Lord has done it this very day;
    let us rejoice today and be glad.

²⁵ Lord, save us!
    Lord, grant us success!

²⁶ Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
    From the house of the Lord we bless you.^[b]
27 The Lord is God,
    and he has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession
    up^[c] to the horns of the altar.

²⁸ You are my God, and I will praise you;
    you are my God, and I will exalt you.

²⁹ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.