Dear Friends:
There are memories for me to sort through in this decompressed time without the stress of a work schedule. Good memories. Echoes of grace. I took on much of my life as a fight, but Christ arrived in my later years with a simple question–“If I love you, why fight?”
His love left me without a need or a justification to fight. This turned my prayers from urgent demands for help and victory to grateful acknowledgement that my life belongs to Christ and what will be is what he wants. Surrender means the relief of obedience, but that’s impossible to know in hypothetical speculation.
Pride will always deceive one into resisting grace. We may sing about its amazing qualities, but we don’t like grace very much when it means “He must increase and I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). Like a child holding a hammer or a wrench, we think that we are mature and smart enough to fix the problem without troubling our parent, but the mess grows and overwhelms us. There is nothing to it then but we must be helped rather than help ourselves.
Praying the Psalms at 3:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, I reach Psalm 136. I can’t say that I’ve given it much thought before, but given the time and the circumstances it has new meaning to me.
It is reminiscent of an African-American “call and response” sermon which is quite alright with me.
1 O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
2 O give thanks to the God of gods,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
3 O give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his steadfast love endures forever;4 who alone does great wonders,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
5 who by understanding made the heavens,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
6 who spread out the earth on the waters,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
7 who made the great lights,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
8 the sun to rule over the day,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
9 the moon and stars to rule over the night,
for his steadfast love endures forever;10 who struck Egypt through their firstborn,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
11 and brought Israel out from among them,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
12 with a strong hand and an outstretched arm,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
13 who divided the Red Sea* in two,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
14 and made Israel pass through the midst of it,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
15 but overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea,*
for his steadfast love endures forever;
16 who led his people through the wilderness,
for his steadfast love endures for ever;
17 who struck down great kings,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
18 and killed famous kings,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
19 Sihon, king of the Amorites,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
20 and Og, king of Bashan,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
21 and gave their land as a heritage,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
22 a heritage to his servant Israel,
for his steadfast love endures forever.23 It is he who remembered us in our low estate,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
24 and rescued us from our foes,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
25 who gives food to all flesh,
for his steadfast love endures forever.26 O give thanks to the God of heaven,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
The Psalm is a hymn thanking God for being God. It recounts his acts from creation to the Exodus and on through the battles for possession of the land of Canaan. From the hardships of the Exodus on, it is noted that God remembered his people in their distress, delivered them and fed them with heavenly bread.
At every high and low point in the memory of the people, God’s love proved steadfast and enduring. God never quit and therefore the “forever” of the future can be trusted to him. That is ever and always cause for giving thanks to God.
Curiously, there is no reference to the law or its revelation at Sinai in the Psalm. There are simply 25 reminders that God loves his people with a “you can count on me” kind of love that stretches into forever. Remembering this love with thanksgiving is the sum and substance of our life with God.
Ann Voskamp writes beautifully of this Psalm:
Remembering is an act of thanksgiving, a way of thanksgiving, this turn of the heart over time’s shoulder to see all the long way His arms have carried. “Gratitude is the memory of the heart,” writes Jean Baptiste Massieu, but gratitude is not only the memories of our heart; gratitude is a memory of God’s heart and to thank and remember God. . . .
In memory, the shape of God’s yesterday-heart emerges and assures of God’s now-heart and reassures of His sure beat tomorrow. And for the first time I see why the Israelites are covenanted with God to be a people who remember with thanks. It is thanksgiving that shapes a theology of trust and the Israelites bear witness and see.
Isn’t this what ultimately Christ asks of us in the Last Supper? One of the very last directives He offers to His disciples, the one of supreme import but I too often neglect to remember. Do this in remembrance of Me. Remember and give thanks (one thousand gifts, [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010], pp 152-153).
True gratitude is the antidote to toxic pride. It inherently carries the confession that God, not our cleverness and strength, is responsible for our salvation and well-being.
But gratitude does not exist in a vacuum. “Thanks” is just a word unless it is tied to a memory of a real kindness or a gift. The seed of faith is God’s love demonstrated to us. This seed leafs out into trust when we remember God’s faithfulness to us with gratitude.
It is human nature to frame our relationships as “win or lose” propositions. Contemporary transactional theory posits the goal as a “win-win” result, but that still makes our coming out on top the priority. In my experience “win-win” only means getting what our side wants while persuading the other side that they ought to feel good about it which works about as well as water-based make-up until the rain comes.
Psalm 136 conveys neither a win-lose nor a win-win proposition. There is a God and we are his people. His steadfast love to us endures forever regardless of circumstance, merit, success or failure on our part.
There are three qualities here that command our attention. First, God loves us. People blame God for a lot of things including the presence of evil and pain. They demand roses without thorns and woods without poison oak. A God who won’t remove the imperfections and dangers of living is no God for them.
Yet, the rejection of God because we suffer does not end our suffering or offer us an alternative hope. Love acquires its highest worth when violence is met with kindness, suffering is addressed with mercy, injustice is confronted with forgiveness and love offers similar contradictions to selfishness.
Psalm 136 speaks of a God above us “who alone does great wonders” yet who remembers the oppression of his children and walks with them through and out of it. He personally leads his people through the wilderness of their confusion and removes the enemies that block their way out of the desert of their existence.
He is a God who loves us at our lowest point and rescues us from the foes that would keep us down. True love carries an inherent freedom of choice and God chooses to love us at our worst and at our best and all times in between.
The second quality of note is that God’s love is steadfast, meaning nothing we can do can shake it off or hide from it. If we turn our back on God, his light shines on our back.
This steadfast love defies comparison. When our performance is premised on what looks good to us, what seems pleasing to us, and what is desirable to give us the edge in knowledge we are living in the realm of comparison and we are headed for the fate of Adam and Eve. Their pursuit of self-fulfillment left them feeling inadequate and ashamed in the presence of God (Gen 3:4-13).
We repeat our first ancestors fall from grace whenever we take our eyes off Christ and look to ourselves for wisdom. This sounds unrealistic and other-worldly, and that it is.
The Apostle Paul lays it out in the first three verses of the 12th chapter of his Letter to the Romans. Our acceptable worship is to give ourselves to God entirely. We keep thinking about God and with God until God, rather than the world around us, shapes our thinking. Finally, we are not to think that we are better or worse than others, but to make a sober judgment out of the faith that God himself gives us that we belong to God and our sole purpose is to do his will.
To keep our eyes fixed on Christ, God personified to us in unconditional love, is what it means to die to self. Paul writes, “Set your mind on the things that are above, where Christ is, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory (Col 3:2-4).
This brings us to the third quality of God to be learned from Psalm 136. God loves us in all circumstances and he is going love us forever. It is his nature to love, you know (1 Jn 4:16). He would cease to exist if he stopped loving us. That’s never going to happen.
The only thing that stops us living eternally in God’s love is our choice to live our way, on our own limited time, and our finite strength. That is to live without God and sin is to miss the mark of God (Rom 3:23).
When we set our own mark for achievement we are living in sin regardless of our good intentions. Looking to Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life,” is the solution to that problem (Jn 12:32; Jn 14:6).
A God, who made us, loves us without regard to our worthiness, and who won’t quit loving us is worth thinking about in the middle of the night. I lived with more pain than I cared to admit in stubborn pride for a long time. It wasn’t just the knee.
I am reminded in this quiet time of healing that I have been privileged to see great and wonderful things and know that there is a God. I have been pulled out of bad places and recognized the hand mercy. I have fought hard battles and learned what effort and commitment can do to turn the tide of struggle. Everyone I know can say the same thing.
But over, underneath, before and after all those things is a great and sure Love that is more than my point of departure and place of returning. It is the constant of my life and experience. Spiritual health is to remember this Love with thanksgiving.
If I am asking God to make me whole, what does that mean except that he loves me completely and I yield all of myself to him? The Apostle John answers this succinctly, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them (1 Jn 4:16).
I remember where I have been and Who has brought me through. I thereby gain faith for where I am going and Who will take me there. But I can neither dwell in the past nor the future. I am grateful that I can live now in the knowledge that I am loved. When it is all said and done, what else do I really need to know (Mt 7:23)?
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,
Kent
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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.
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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.
Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.