I encountered this honest and worshipful and HOPEFUL modern psalm piece yesterday when it was shared by the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky. Its writer, Larry Gray, is the president of Baptist Health Louisville, and Board of Trustees, Baptist Seminary of Kentucky.
A Pandemic Psalm
by Larry W. Gray
O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
Though we walk through valley of lengthening shadows,
Where hours melt into days and days into weeks,
Where sameness dulls the imagination and numbness clouds our hope,
Where hucksters, false prophets and profiteers find solid footing in our anxiety and fear,
where we become easy targets for their empty wares,
Receptacles for their illusions,
And we join them in proclaiming false hope,
posting messages of peace, peace, where there is no peace.
You come along side and remind us that you are the God who frees the enslaved.
That you are the creator who brings sinew and breath to dry bones,
Who brings life out of dried up semen and withered wombs.
You are the traveler, the sojourner,
Who does not call from afar but who enters Exile with us;
Exile, where temple is absent and identity is lost.
You, my comforter, are my guide in these day-long hours and across uneven terrain.
You remind me of what has been, when travelling was joyous,
When we gathered in familiar places and sang ancient songs
and laughed and cried our way together through life.
You remind me that the valley may forever shape the way my feet fall upon the path,
That the valley may teach me new ways of walking;
With uneven gait, stumbling and rising up again.
Remind me, O God, that you are the wooing voice
out ahead in the darkness on the way, and
That you are preparing me for a new future
where these now unsteady steps may become new dance,
Where insights born out of cave’s shadows and midnight wrestling matches
will create new ways of being in the world,
Where new memories fuel new visions,
Where new images inspire new song.
You will bless it all, and I will find myself,
Not returned to the fields of days gone-by, but in a new meadow
where familiar flowers and yet-to-be-known flora flourish together,
And I will hear your hope-filled melodies of brook and birdsong,
calling me to new life.
May it be so; my creative, redemptive and sustaining lover, friend and healer.
O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
♦ ♦ ♦
