I will remember the works of the Lord: and call to mind thy wonders of old time.

 

Monday, October 2, 2023


Psalm 77

1 Kings 16:8-34

Matthew 9:1-13


I will remember the works of the Lord: and call to mind thy wonders of old time.


While the words were written almost half a millennium ago, our Book of Common Prayer is still worth going back to every now and again. We might presume to be so wise and enlightened as to want to edge off some of the rough corners here and there (and the authors, according to the preface, encourage this); but the core spirituality of this little book is a gem. It is perhaps one of history’s little jokes that what was originally published in order to “avoid diversities of opinion” now seems almost puritan in its tenor.


Yet here we are so many generations later and whatever was consistent with scripture in that book is consistent with our human experience today. In today’s Psalm, Asaph is writing about something we have all gone through. Lying on our bed, tossing and turning with stress and worry, God keeps our eyes from closing. The terror then steps in: has God changed His mind about me? While the sun was shining and everything was going well, nothing could keep the hallelujahs out of my mouth. But now that the darkness has come, the question begins to loom in the back of my head, too terrifying to even begin to think about.


Because we all have this fallen nature, we all, at one point or another, find ourselves asking this question. No-one experiences a perfect and endless trust in God. To ask this question reveals an aspect of our sin nature that our Orthodox family speaks about so often: that sin is like a sickness, or a disease. It is not like the type of sin we commit when we do not offer our mother a cup of tea while we are boiling the kettle; nor is it the type of sin we commit when we tell that rude man to take a hike. It is passive sin; it is the side-effect of our sin disease.


This is why the Book of Common Prayer is filled with the ministry of confession and repentance. Sometimes we need to confess not to God the Merciful, but God the Healer. As Jesus told those who were upset at Him: the Son of Man has authority not just to heal sickness, but to forgive sins. We read about Jesus not only healing or only forgiving: He does both. The sin-sickness of lying on our bed in restless worry is cured by remembering all the wonderful things God has done for us. Calling out to Jesus in prayer, we find He readily applies the cure, because He loves us, and knows what is best for us.

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