“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the lands”. Psalm 100:1
The sunrise was so beautiful this morning with deep reds and golds filling the sky and brushing beautiful light upon the trees. The words of Psalm 100 were my morning prayer. Well at least the first few verses of the Psalm, “ Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Know that it is God who made us. We are God’s people.”
How does the psalm end? I was off to find a bible. The search was on. Back when I was working as a pastor I always had several bibles in the car. I would grab them hastily off the back pews at the church on the way out the door for a hospital visit or funeral planning. They rarely made it back inside. I don’t need a bible now in my work as a para at the local middle school so the car has been cleaned out and bibles returned. I eventually found a bible in our living room, one whose cover is well worn. It was my grandfather’s bible and the front inscription reads, “to Fayette Ranney from his grandmother.”
Carefully, I open the pages and on page 614 is Psalm 100. I find the ending lines, “God’s faithfulness is to all generations. It is good to hold my grandpa’s bible. I get to imagine him again. He was short, but very muscular from his work as a farmer on the plains of Western Minnesota. My grandfather grew corn and soybeans and raised beef cattle. He and my grandmother were hardworking, faithful folks. They were always there for us when we needed them growing up. I got to spend lots of summer days on their farm.
As I thought of them, I remembered a passage from Anne Lamott’s book, Traveling Mercies. She writes, “It’s funny, I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools; the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools—friendships, prayers, conscience, honesty—and said do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly against all odds, they’re enough.”
Friendship, prayers, conscience, honesty. Yes, Lamott is right, these are enough. And these are the things we hope to pass on. It doesn’t mean the middle of our lives won’t be messy or murky or muddled. It certainly has been so for me and many other people these last many months. But we go on trusting that God is faithful. And with our tools we do the best we can knowing that God is the knot we hold on to when we’ve come to what we think is the end of our rope.
So as I pass the stuffing and potatoes this Thursday, I will give thanks for my grandparents and the rusty bent tools they passed down to me- prayer, honesty, hard work and yes how to play Euchre. For truly, God’s faithfulness is to all generations.
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