September 5, 2007
Fathom
“Praise God for what you can fathom; / for what you can’t fathom, praise God”
(Psalm 146).*
Throughout her first six months of abstinence from alcohol, a friend of mine was like the guy in the TV ad gleefully stopping anybody and everybody anywhere to tell them his cholesterol is down. She was incessantly grateful for her “new” life away from substance abuse.
One day, her fortune turned, and all we could hear was a bad case of the “why me’s?” Finally, somebody took her in hand and told her, Try showing as much gratitude for the bad stuff as for the good. Maybe there’s meaning in discomfort as well as in comfort. Maybe some thanksgiving when we rarely think of offering thanksgiving will open a perspective never seen before.
Fear blinds the path to praise. Anxiety throws life’s lenses out of focus. Anger is an inevitable response. Isaiah says, “Be strong, fear not!” (Is 25.4) James reminds with his timeless phrase, “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (Jas 1.22). Twelve-Step programs claim there’s little effect in recovery, lest one “walk the talk.” All that’s well and good, but not all that easy to undertake.
“Praise God for what you can fathom; / for what you can’t fathom, praise God” (Ps 146).
To fathom is to understand. To understand is to find meaning, support, foundation. For the thoughtful, maybe it’s an easy cause for gratitude. But not to fathom, to find no meaning rarely provokes a grateful heart, only a fearful one. Such fear is an enemy. Much fear pervades today the very community whose love it is said can cast it out.
In the “Prayers of the People,” the time following the opportunity for intercession is often filled with names, events, needs, some fears, and more than a few mumbles. The time appointed for thanksgiving is more often ominously quiet.
The psalmist suggests that this part of the Prayers may be a good place to praise God for what we cannot fathom, perhaps for our enemy fear. Jesus said to love our enemies. Praise is not an altogether bad way to start the improbability of all that.
*Stephen Mitchell, “A Book of Psalms: Selected and Adapted from the Hebrew,” HarperCollins, 1993, p 79
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