“If you want charity, he is that charity – and even more, for it was the power of love and charity that kept him nailed fast to the cross. The cross and nails could never have held the God-Man, had not the power of charity held him.”
-- St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
The 13th Station. St. Symphorian Church, Pfettisheim, Bas-Rhin, France.
Sometimes when using a psalm in a prayer service, I turn to an old friend: The Good News Bible. Although my husband and I had very different upbringings, we both read our Good News Bibles as children, and in some deep part of us, those funny line drawings and those straightforward messages took root.
The Good News Translation (GNT) never claimed to be the most accurate or the most beautiful English language translation of the Word of God. It isn’t for academic use or for our formal liturgies. But for giving us a fresh look at familiar passages, or for introducing us to Scripture, it certainly has its place!
This is why I sometimes turn to the Good News Translation for re-introducing the Psalms, or for moving people out of “I know this one” and into a new experience of an old prayer. Take Psalm 139 for example, a beloved psalm about the nearness of God. The psalmist is saying: “Even if I wanted to get away from you, God, I couldn’t!” The words of this psalm in a translation such as the NRSV are just beautiful: “If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” But so are the words of the GNT, stated a bit less poetically perhaps, but with satisfying simplicity: “If I flew away beyond the east or lived in the farthest place in the west, you would be there to lead me, you would be there to help me” (Ps. 139:9-10). Both translations have something special to say, and I like them both.
Another example from the same psalm: Which do you think best expresses the intimacy we had with God before we can remember? “Your eyes beheld my unformed substance” (NRSV) or “You saw me before I was born” (GNT; Ps. 139:16)? I cast a hearty vote for the GNT on this one! You saw me before I was born?! I love it!
Click here for a side-by-side comparison of Psalm 139 in the NRSV and the GNT. I hope you will enjoy praying them both.
Note: If you don’t have a copy of the Good News Bible, you can always look up psalms or verses at biblegateway.com (though you would be missing out on the illustrations!). You should always check a translation such as the RSV/NRSV or the NABRE for accuracy, but don’t hesitate to pray with the simple words of the GNT.
I used to live down the street from a church that always had wit and wisdom to share on its marquee sign. If I’d kept a record, I would have regular, clever quips to share with you! But only one has stayed with me through the years. Driving home one day, minding my own business and thinking my own thoughts, the sign caught my eye:
“Afraid to change? Think of the beauty of autumn.”
How many of our intra- and inter-personal problems derive from this human condition of “afraid to change”? Is the hardest prayer of all: “Change me”? Trees do not resist the natural processes that change them – make them beautiful, strip them of leaves, renew them in spring. But we? Resist every step of the way.
Yes, God loves me just the way I am. But I can turn more beautiful colors!
Thinking of the beauty of autumn in Connecticut!
Do you ever pray about the weather? “Pray for good weather this Sunday for the church picnic.” While there’s certainly nothing wrong with praying for this sort of thing, it may create legitimate questions in our minds: If God would arrange good weather for our church picnic, why wouldn’t he arrange for hurricanes to avoid heavily populated areas, or for monsoons to stop before they become devastating floods, or for rain to fall on drought-stricken farms? Why not redirect a polar vortex or subdue a tsunami?
Can God control the weather? Of course. But does he?
In this way, earth’s storms are not unlike the storms of life. We can and we should pray about the difficulties and devastations we face. We must always communicate with, and lean on and believe in, our loving and powerful God. But we are well aware that he does not always intervene when it comes to “bad weather.” Could God control every aspect of our lives, create a wall around us, protecting us from every bad thing? Perhaps. But does he? He most certainly does not.
Perhaps it comes down to a question of how God protects us. There are times in life when we feel miraculously protected – walking away from a car accident, being thrown from a horse and standing up good as new. But for the most part, we get tossed around by life with scars to show for it – there are injuries, illnesses, heartbreaks, sleeplessness, stress and death – for all of God’s children. The rain falls on everyone, and some even seem to get more than their fair share. God does not always shield us from these things. And yet he remains our powerful protector. He protects not with a power that interferes with each event, but a power that gathers us in, and pulls us near, and makes and keeps promises about being with us. It is a power that may strike us as a bit too subtle at times, and yet as time passes, we recognize how awesome, and how essential, and how real it actually is.
As a parent, I do not want my children to suffer, and I am naturally tempted to smooth their paths in whatever way I can. But even more than I may want an easy life for them, I want a great life for them. I want them to be great. And the fact is that great people have suffered. They have experienced the storms of life without always bailing out into the nearest shelter. They have learned the most important things by being brought down low. Storms transformed them and made them strong, wise, clearheaded and serene. Wounded? Yes, that too. But we can be wounded and still be great. It is much harder to be utterly unscathed and be anything more than mediocre.
God allows bad weather – really bad weather – and he allows life’s storms. Sometimes the storms are so bad that our wounds don’t heal. For those times we may simply have to surrender: “Lord, I know you may not change this storm, but you are always willing to change me. So if you must, make me great!”
Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) -- The Morning After the Deluge by William Turner, 1843.
Relationships are really hard! Have you noticed? And yet our lives are meant to revolve around two basic commands, both requiring a great deal of love: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (cf. Mt. 22:34-40).
We should never be without hope in our relationship with God – we know a lot about his unconditional love – how he eats with sinners and goes after even one straying sheep. We may neglect God or even betray him, but he will always run out to greet us, place rings on our fingers and serve us meals of celebration to enjoy with our friends.
But what about our human relationships? They seem to weaken and break so easily, and sometimes we lose hope. We no longer know who is right or wrong, who is truly being stubborn, or whether the damage can ever be undone. For those times, I want to share this beautiful prayer by Joyce Rupp. It is called “Prayer for Peace in a Relationship”:
Dear Mender of Hearts, you are friend of all and foe of none. Your goodness is seeded in everyone, including those with whom I struggle. Enter into my heart and soften its hardness. Erase any ill will and anger abiding there. Help me to reach out with openness, to speak when I prefer hiding in silence. Teach me how to listen with loving ears and to not cling tenaciously to my opinions. Instill hope of reconciliation in our hearts and help us not give up on one another. Be the Patience within us that resolves issues. Be the Love among us that seeks forgiveness. Be the Faith amid us that strengthens our bonds. Be the Truce between us that brings us peace.
Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, ca. 1511