Praise In The Wake of Peril
Psalm 66:8-20
1Shout for joy to God, all the earth!
2Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious.
3Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you.
4All the earth bows down to you;
they sing praise to you, they sing the praises of your name.”
5Come and see what God has done,
his awesome deeds for mankind!
6He turned the sea into dry land,
they passed through the waters on foot— come, let us rejoice in him.
7He rules forever by his power,
his eyes watch the nations—let not the rebellious rise up against him.
8Praise our God, all peoples,
let the sound of his praise be heard;
9he has preserved our lives
and kept our feet from slipping.
10For you, God, tested us;
you refined us like silver.
11You brought us into prison
and laid burdens on our backs.
12You let people ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.
13I will come to your temple with burnt offerings
and fulfill my vows to you—
14vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke
when I was in trouble.
15I will sacrifice fat animals to you
and an offering of rams; I will offer bulls and goats.
16Come and hear, all you who fear God;
let me tell you what he has done for me.
17I cried out to him with my mouth;
his praise was on my tongue.
18If I had cherished sin in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened;
19but God has surely listened
and has heard my prayer.
20Praise be to God,
who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!
Genesis 6:5-22;
5The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
9This is the account of Noah and his family.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14So make yourself an ark of cypress c wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. d 16Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit e high all around. f Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”
22Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
Acts 27:1-12
1When it was decided that we would sail for Italy, Paul and some other prisoners were handed over to a centurion named Julius, who belonged to the Imperial Regiment. 2We boarded a ship from Adramyttium about to sail for ports along the coast of the province of Asia, and we put out to sea. Aristarchus, a Macedonian from Thessalonica, was with us.
3The next day we landed at Sidon; and Julius, in kindness to Paul, allowed him to go to his friends so they might provide for his needs. 4From there we put out to sea again and passed to the lee of Cyprus because the winds were against us. 5When we had sailed across the open sea off the coast of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we landed at Myra in Lycia. 6There the centurion found an Alexandrian ship sailing for Italy and put us on board. 7We made slow headway for many days and had difficulty arriving off Cnidus. When the wind did not allow us to hold our course, we sailed to the lee of Crete, opposite Salmone. 8We moved along the coast with difficulty and came to a place called Fair Havens, near the town of Lasea.
9Much time had been lost, and sailing had already become dangerous because by now it was after the Day of Atonement. a So Paul warned them, 10“Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also.” 11But the centurion, instead of listening to what Paul said, followed the advice of the pilot and of the owner of the ship. 12Since the harbor was unsuitable to winter in, the majority decided that we should sail on, hoping to reach Phoenix and winter there. This was a harbor in Crete, facing both southwest and northwest.
Meditation:
This past week, I was listening to a British TV host reporting on a survey of British travelers. The survey centered on answers to this question: “What’s the longest ‘driving-trip' you’ve taken?” The average answer was 250 kilometers or about 150 miles, a number that’s almost laughable for the average American driver. In this country, we tend to travel much greater distances as a matter of course. We think nothing of driving to Canada or the Midwest, or the East Coast. Some of us have even driven to Alaska. At those lengths, it’s not a “drive” but a journey bordering on a saga. If you’re on the road for that many miles, you’re bound to see and/or experience something unusual, something that grabs your full attention, something that makes an impression. Maybe it’s an accident, or a storm, or a road-rage incident that grabs your full attention. Things like that register in your mind and often produce a moment of reflection.
One of the first examples of this for me happened when I was 7 years old. Our family was living in a little town in southwest Ontario Canada, also known as its snow belt. It was the winter of 1964, and it seemed like the snowstorms never ended. One after the other. Driving winds produced blinding conditions and endless drifting across every road, no matter what direction we traveled. On one occasion, I was with my dad in these conditions and was mesmerized by his approach to driving in these conditions. The harder it snowed and the higher the drifts crossing the road, the faster he went. I distinctly remember asking him, why. Why was he going faster and faster? His answer centered on momentum: hit the drift as hard as you can to get through OR get stuck in the middle. We eventually made it home safely. It was a trip I will never forget…not quite a journey, but it’s been a story in my life ever since, a story of God’s grace and goodness in the midst of a child’s fright and uncertainty.
For the past several years, I’ve noticed a change in the way believers talk about their Christian experience. Two words keep coming into play as folks talk about their daily lives in the midst of God’s kingdom: journey and story. When my ministry began, virtually no one used those metaphors. Today, they are commonly used to describe our daily lives. We all have a story to tell, and much of it centers on the “journey” that is our life before the face of God.
Both the Psalmist and the writer of Acts access this frame of reference. The Psalmist rehearses the exodus of Israel out of Egypt while Luke rehearses Paul’s last voyage across the Mediterranean Sea. Both journeys proved “frightful” and were fraught with uncertainty. Both journeys took place under both the guidance and providence of the Almighty. However, the truth of that didn’t always produce “peace of mind” in the moment. It produced a vast array of reactions and emotions, which only afterwards prompted God’s children to acknowledge his care and provision and then praise his name.
Does any of that sound familiar? How many storms have you lived through so far? How many drifted roads have you had to punch through? How many times have you struggled with the decision to press on or seek a safe haven? Some of us have been through many “storms”; others of us not so many, but every one of us is on a journey, and our lives are writing a story. These stories catalogue the evidence of our Father in Heaven’s grace and goodness in the face of hardship and struggle. We don’t always think about it in the moment, but it eventually dawns on us that our Lord and Savior saw us through the struggle, and therefore we can/must praise him.
My prayer for each one of us is that our stories will include a modicum of awe and wonder and not a little praise for God’s daily guidance and grace while we walk the path of the journey that is the Christian life. Have you lived through a “storm” recently? Tell someone about it. Bear witness to God’s generous provision and then praise his name on account of it. Trust me, your listeners will take note and be encouraged, especially when they face the storms in their own lives.
Cf. James 1:2
2Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Have a great day in the kingdom.