We are ordinary people, living ordinary lives, and yet, as insignificant as we are in the big picture of the universe, God is faithful to us!
God is faithful to us!
So we ordinary people have an extraordinary calling!
Go and tell about God’s faithfulness to us!
Because this news is so wonderful and hopeful that we just can’t keep it to ourselves!
The Old Testament reading from Lamentations we’ve just heard says that
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning:
Great is your faithfulness, Lord.
The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.”
The writer of these words, 586 years before Jesus lived, had survived the destruction of Jerusalem. The Babylonians had burned the city, destroyed the temple, left everything in ruins, and had hauled off the most important citizens into captivity. The writer must have been an ordinary person, because he was one of those left behind, like just another piece of rubble.
This left behind, ordinary person wrote about this tragedy in the laments that we know today as the Old Testament book of Lamentations. Not until Chapter 3 does any note of hope ring out.
Perhaps the writer has gotten up before sunrise, and made his way through the rubble filled streets to the remains of the temple.
Standing there in the midst of great stones heaped in piles, the strong cypress wood timbers fallen, fragile and charred, the writer faces East, looking out on the Mount of Olives.
He watches as the dark blue of the last bit of night turns into a shining on the horizon, and then the sun comes blazing up, and the new day has begun.
And light falls on the shadowy ruins, and hope springs up and starts to grow again in this man’s heart—because he can feel God’s faithfulness and God’s steadfast love to him!
And he just has to write down how the faithfulness of God has encouraged him and given him hope, even in the midst of all that destruction.
We still read these words today, even at funerals, finding in God’s steadfast love the hope that brings with it new life, and new awareness of God’s mercies.
The person who wrote Lamentations in turn inspired Thomas Chisholm, who described himself as an old shoe, just a regular person who never suffered anything as traumatic as the destruction of Jerusalem, to write the words of today’s opening hymn, “Great is thy faithfulness.”
Chisholm was born in a log cabin in Kentucky. He became a Christian at age twenty-seven and became a preacher at age thirty-six. Only one year into his ministry, Chisolm had to retire because of his poor health. He spent the rest of his life in New Jersey working as a life insurance agent.
He said of his life, “My income has not been large at any time in my life due to impaired health in earlier years which has followed me on until now. Although I must not fail here to record the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant keeping God and that he has given me many wonderful displays of his providing care, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness.”
This ordinary and rather sickly man, sitting behind a desk day in and day out, wrote over 1200 poems, most of them forgettable. But he sent off his poem, “Great is thy faithfulness,” based on the words from the poet who wrote Lamentations, to Hope Publishing Company. William Runyan, inspired by the words, set them to music. George Beverly Shea, inspired by the hymn, made the hymn famous around the world by singing it during the Billy Graham crusades.
And in turn, we find ourselves inspired and comforted by this beloved hymn because it reminds us that we too can trust in God, who is unfailingly faithful to us.
As Bob Kauflin points out in his article about this hymn, verse one talks about God’s faithfulness revealed in the words of scripture.
In today’s gospel reading, God’s faithfulness and steadfast love, personified in Jesus, heal a desperate woman and save a little girl from an early death.
The second verse of the hymn describes God’s faithfulness to us as we see that faithfulness play out in creation—the steady cycle of the seasons, the orbits of the planets, the sun’s life giving light, orderly, dependable, “guided by God’s faithful hand.”
As the first reading puts it, “God created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and the dominion of Hades is not in them.”
The third verse reminds us of God’s faithfulness to each one of us—pardon, peace, God’s presence with us to cheer us and to guide us, strength to get through the day, hope for tomorrow, and blessings too numerous to even count!
God’s faithfulness to us, visible in scripture, visible in creation, and most clearly visible in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is something wonderful to proclaim!
https://worshipmatters.com/2009/08/03/a-hymn-for-ordinary-christians-great-is-thy-faithfulness/
The writer of Lamentations, an ordinary man, wrote about God’s faithfulness and steadfast love, even in the ruins,
And nearly three thousand years later, inspired William Chisholm, just an ordinary man, to proclaim God’s faithfulness in a way that millions could hear.
Someone in the crowd around Jesus went and proclaimed God’s faithfulness, visible in all that Jesus was doing.
Remember –the desperate woman who was determined to touch Jesus, sure that she would be healed, decided to take this rather daring action because she had heard about Jesus.
What some ordinary person had told her about Jesus convinced her that God’s faithfulness to her through Jesus would indeed heal her, and she was not disappointed.
Now it’s our turn.
We know God’s faithfulness to us, through scripture, through what we see around us in creation, in what we’ve experienced in our own lives—pardon, peace, God’s strength, hope, and blessings! We know God’s faithfulness to us through Jesus’ love and care and healing for each one of us!
This is news so good that we ordinary people just have to go out and share this extraordinary news!
Because this news can make a difference for those who hear us tell about Jesus and God’s faithfulness to us.
Someone who hears us talking or even singing about God’s faithfulness may go read scripture, or become aware of God’s presence and guiding hand in creation, or even just start counting their blessings. They may go to Jesus for healing. They may go to Jesus and find new life. They may come to trust in God’s faithfulness.
So be faithful to the one who is eternally faithful to us.
So what, if in the words of that old spiritual, you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you call still tell the love of Jesus!
Go and tell about God’s faithfulness to you.
Someone is waiting to hear!
Amen.
Resource: https://worshipmatters.com/2009/08/03/a-hymn-for-ordinary-christians-great-is-thy-faithfulness/