Leonard J. Vander Zee

Part of my job at Faith Alive Christian Resources and on the editorial committee for the new hymnal Lift Up Your Hearts was to be one of the “theological police.” But is it truly important to make sure hymns pass theological muster? They’re only songs, after all.

We all have scars, from the unsutured nicks of our childhood to long gouges left on a chest from bypass surgery, to the empty rippled space from a mastectomy. Some scars are readily visible; others are hidden and remain hidden from embarrassment or reticence.

The biblical heading for Psalm 102 is “The prayer of an afflicted person who has grown weak and pours out a lament before the Lord.” In the honest and vivid language typical of the psalms, the writer expresses a cry of pain and desolation, coupled with a poetic and, strangely, almost clinical description of the emotions, thoughts, and physical symptoms of a dying person. So how might we use this psalm in pastoral ministry and worship?

I suggest using the adaptation of Psalm 102, found on the next page, in at least two pastoral settings.

People need heroes. We need them as examples of the kind of life to strive for, as common ideals around which the community coheres. A few weeks ago, I heard Trygve Johnson, Dean of the Chapel at Hope College in Holland, Michigan (see p. 16), preach on the “heroes of faith” passage in Hebrews. That passage ends with the stirring call, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders . . . and run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Heb. 12:1).

For various reasons I now live in two cities. My wife and I have our home in South Bend, Indiana, and I work in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We usually spend about three weekends a month in South Bend and one in Grand Rapids.

Walter Brueggeman. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003. 173 pp. $12.00.

Anyone at all familiar with Walter Brueggemann’s work will note his characteristic offbeat style already in the title of this book (awed to heaven). Brueggemann, an Old Testament theologian, is here the theologian at prayer. This collection of prayers brings together his prayers (no more than a page each, often less) from such diverse occasions as opening a class to leading a worship service.

There is a telling soliloquy in Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins that neatly sums up my concern in this article. Dr. Thomas More, Percy's Catholic protagonist, is having some conflict with his Protestant wife, Ellen, on matters of religious practice.

I remember when I was a kid and sometimes Christmas and New Years Day fell in a particular year on a Saturday Because we were a pious church-going family, we would attend all the services the church offered. That meant worship on Saturday morning for Christmas service, and then again on Sunday morning and evening. But the real kicker came the next weekend.

Though it has faded in importance over the last few decades, the godparent relationship has had a long and distinguished history in the church. Traditionally chosen by the parents of a child and present at baptism, godparents played a number of roles in the life of a baptized child. Sometimes they even assumed the parental role when the parents were unable to for some reason. Perhaps most important, godparents were responsible with the parents to insure that a child received the proper spiritual training.