To God be the glory

Today's Psalm reading from the Revised Common Lectionary is Psalm 130.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

    Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
    to the voice of my supplications!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
    Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you,
    so that you may be revered.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning,
    more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with him is great power to redeem.

It is he who will redeem Israel
    from all its iniquities.

What stands out to me most from this passage is But there is forgiveness with you,
    so that you may be revered. That we are forgiven by God, so that honor and glory shall be his.


It reminds me of the Fanny Crosby hymn, to God be the Glory.




The first verse and refrain of the hymn are:

To God be the glory, great things he hath done! 
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son,
who yielded his life an atonement for sin, 
and opened the lifegate that all may go in. 

Refrain: 
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, 
let the earth hear his voice! 
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, 
let the people rejoice! 
O come to the Father thru Jesus the Son, 
and give him the glory, great things he hath done!

Ms. Crosby beautifully captures the idea of the greatest thing God has done for us is redeeming us by the death of Jesus and that our response is to come to him and give him praise and glory.


Do we use our forgiveness as a way of showing the world God's greatness? Do we turn back to God when he forgave us in a way that demonstrates to the world how great and wonderful God is? Or do we live our life in a way to seeks to bring glory and honor to us because we claim to be in Christ?

Two men went to the temple to pray. One prayed, Thank God I am not like that sinner. The other, God, grant me mercy for I am a sinner. Jesus said only one of those two people went home justified. One sought forgiveness to give him glory. The other saw only the glory of God.

A childhood dream realized

Growing up as a kid in the 1980's, the space shuttle program was the basis for my dreams of space exploration. I would watch launches on television, had a Commodore 64 game, Project Space Station, where you ran the space program, and was a member of the Young Astronauts at school.

I always wanted to go to Florida to watch a launch. The closest I got was in November of 2009, watching Space Shuttle Atlantis, STS-129, launch from Kennedy while I was on an airplane at 37,000 feet off the west coast of Florida on a flight from Atlanta to Key West.

Now that the program is over, what is there for kids to dream about? I have taken my kids to see two of the shuttles on display, but I think I'm much more excited about them than they are.

We saw Endeavour in Los Angeles at the California Science Center in summer of 2014.

 

Yesterday, we saw Discovery at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

While I would certainly go see Enterprise if in New York, let's face it, she is a wanna-be space shuttle. Therefore, I consider my childhood complete in having seen the remaining 3 of the 5 orbiters to have gone into space.