The following is from when I spoke in chapel on July 13, 2017. I think I write better than I speak – especially in Chapel! please forgive the heavy Chicago accent.
Good morning. Thank you to Pastor Scott for giving us an opportunity to share thoughts on this Psalm. When I first came to sign up, I told him that this is the Psalm with which I am most familiar. I heard it twice in the summer of 2010 – nine weeks apart – when my parents died. It’s said at every burial site that I have ever been to and sometimes recited at wakes or calling hours or whatever your tradition calls the evening before the funeral mass or service.
As a person who spent 12 years in Catholic education, I was taught that God is always with me. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, God was near me. Whether I wanted God to be with me, or not, He was there.
My instructions from a nun in first grade were from the Baltimore catechism:
- Q. What is God?
A. God is a spirit infinitely perfect.
- Q. Had God a beginning?
A. God had no beginning; He always was and He always will be.
- Q. Where is God?
A. God is everywhere.
- Q. If God is everywhere, why do we not see Him?
A. We do not see God, because He is a pure spirit and cannot be seen with bodily eyes.
- Q. Does God see us?
A. God sees us and watches over us.
- Q. Does God know all things?
A. God knows all things, even our most secret thoughts, words, and actions.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/balt/balt1.htm
These were said as a drill, daily. It was a standard Catholic school text from 1885 until the late 1960s. My first grade class was one of the last to be instructed using this catechism. My understanding is that it was officially replaced in 2004 with something called the United States Catholic Catechism. Anyway, we had to memorize them, and I suppose there was some discussion at a 5 or 6-year old’s level. That I don’t remember.
But now that I’m older and hopefully wiser,
I know that while God is everywhere,
and always with me,
I can acknowledge his powerful presence,
and sometimes tune him out.
Just sitting in this beautiful Chapel makes me aware of God’s presence. I love to look at these stained-glass windows, find the faces, and reflect on what I think they mean. I know they’re about bible passages, but I am not as educated about the Bible as I am the Baltimore catechism.
My family’s church, the church where I received all my sacraments, is St. Patrick’s Catholic church in McHenry, Illinois. It’s well over 170 years old. Like many older Catholic churches, German stained-glass windows decorate either side of the sanctuary and two rose-shaped glass windows adorn either end. They are insured for a couple of million dollars. (Another story there, but not today.) The Blessed Mother is in the choir loft and God the Father shines down from above the altar. I love the God the Father representation. I knew with certainty as a child that God looked like that window; as an adult, I still lift my head and pray up towards that window. God is with me.
I have acknowledged God’s presence at other times of my life and I sincerely believe that if I sit still and concentrate hard enough, I feel God as if he were the person sitting next to me in the pew. (Point to someone or mention someone in the pew.) I was taught to do this by my freshman roommate at Augustana College. She was Jewish and I asked her how she prayed. “I don’t say prayers,” she told me. “I sit and ask God to look into my thoughts, read my needs.” It’s very hard to just sit still, remove all thoughts, and let God be with me.
But, admittedly, there are times when I did not acknowledge God’s presence. Two falls ago, the morning after I returned from serious surgery, I was lying in bed, fascinated by the way light changes at 5am.
People who know me will tell you that I’ve never been an early riser until after that surgery. Now I’m lucky if I sleep past 5:30.
But that particular morning I was watching the light come in through the open door off the deck in our bedroom, thinking about my situation, and it dawned on me that I had been through two life-threatening situations and had not ever asked God for his blessings,
his guidance,
his wisdom,
or as my mother always said, his kindness. “Pray that God is kind,” she would say.
I had not done any of that. I had not yet thanked him for life. I had not praised him for a good length of time. I had completely ignored a part of my life that up until that point was as common to me as breathing.
What kind of a person am I?
Human. Part of the reason I did not talk with God then was because of my illness; part of it was just me, ignoring God.
But the beauty of this Psalm, as others have pointed out this summer, is that it shows us that God is with us throughout everything. And that even though we ignore him, or fail to acknowledge him either because we are ill,
or fearful,
or just plain don’t want to think about him,
He is with us!
God was with me during my surgeries. He was with me during treatment, recovery and the difficult times associated with coming back to work. God is with me.
So back to that Baltimore Catechism.
Number 18. Q. Does God know all things?
A. God knows all things, even our most secret thoughts, words, and actions.
And so he is with me. . .
. . . when I work with a student struggling to explain something to me in a language he isn’t fluent in;
. . .with the parents of a student who have come many thousands of miles to help a mentally ill child who will not even see them;
. . . when I walk around this beautiful campus and am overwhelmed by its beauty;
. . .whether I go to Thursday Chapel services or not;
. . .when I wait 2 hours in a doctor’s office and witness truly, ill people and know that my impatience is nothing like their pain;
. . . with my son and his wife as they enjoy their first long-awaited child;
. . .with the American people as they struggle;
. . . with the many people who struggle with mental Illness, with their caregivers who wonder why they are sentenced to a lifetime of caring for someone with these illnesses
. . . with each of you whether you are telling him your concerns in prayer, or letting him read them by Himself;
. . . God is with all of us.
The podcast of this is available here: https://www.callutheran.edu/mission-identity/campus-ministry/worship/chapel-podcast.html
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