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rhythm continued: Psalm 113

By and large, my entire life is a chaotic cacophony of noise. At any given moment, we could be doing any number of things and it can change instantaneously.

The beauty of rhythm is that it can give flexible structure to noise and make it music without changing the actual sounds.

Rhythm feels more natural, more organic if you will. In the context of spirituality it involves certain behaviors and postures and choices involving time and location, sights and sounds, but it is not not a rigid structure that everything else has to form around - IT forms everything else.

Just like a rhythm dictates and enhances the flow of a piece of music, spiritual rhythm should guide the flow of our lives down to the very details of how we see other people in our daily meanderings.

We are in the middle of a blizzard right now, hubby is home, we’re making cocoa and cookies and lighting fires and basically going into a sort of familial hibernation. This “disrupts” any kind of “order” I might have previously had. But wouldn’t it be sad if I wasn’t able to allow the spiritual rhythm to guide these times of joy and family?

Today, I read Psalm 113

These passages stood out to me

4 The LORD is exalted over all the nations,
his glory above the heavens.

The LORD is exalted. The idea that Christians have some sort of spiritual loyalty requirements to their place of birth seems to contradict the truth that the LORD is exalted OVER ALL nations.

7 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;

8 he seats them with princes,
with the princes of his people.

9 He settles the childless woman in her home
as a happy mother of children.
Praise the LORD.

This is so rich throughout the whole of scripture. The childless woman, the poor and the needy are clearly so very important to God. In light of my life as a Christian, one who takes the causes of God and makes them my own, shouldn’t those populations be important to me? Those 3 populations were representative of all those in need in that culture, all of the fringes, the outcasts.

I am challenged to continue to grow in my empathy and to extend my hand further in order to take up the causes most dear to the heart of God.

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