that my heart may sing to you

Psalm 30

There is an aspect of this psalm that is of critical importance for any worshiping community. The writer has had an important experience at the hand of the Lord – brought back from the brink of death, and from the added insult of having certain people rejoice in his demise. So he invites his fellow worshipers to join in his thanksgiving and praise. So what’s their answer? Sorry, we don’t have time to write it into the Powerpoint? Hardly. What is part of the community’s expression of universal truth begins as a very personal experience on the part of one of the members of the community. That’s worth pondering deeply. How does today’s worshiping community allow the Spirit to work through individual’s experience into and through the larger life?

My answer is, I think, it doesn’t matter how you do it, as long we find some way to let it happen. One way is to grow the opportunity for worship as part of small group experience – letting it happen at the church’s cellular level and growing it from there.

For the writer of the psalm, the very value of his continuing earthly existence was all about the opportunity to bear witness to the grace of God that he had experienced. That’s behind the striking argument he makes to the Lord that if he died now and went to the realm of the dead (this is before the revelation of praise in heaven), the Lord would be denied his praise! The argument is a sign of his sense of urgency, his sense of life-purpose in sharing what he had experienced of the Lord.

Prayer:
Lord, let the psalmist’s experience impress on us the importance of our personal experience as the basis for inspiring and encouraging others. The experience, the sharing, the building of community and larger witness – it’s all your doing; just let us provide the appropriate channels. Through Christ. Amen.