Happy B-Day America
“Bless the LORD oh my soul.”
Psalm 103
Happy Friday (and Happy B-Day to the USA),
There’s not much daylight between praising God and blessing him, but there is some. To praise — which comes from the Hebrew term halal (the root of hallelujah) — is a higher energy, community celebration of God's greatness. Think: a Gospel choir singing, “You’re amazing!” To bless, which comes from barakh, is more personal and specific. Think: a love letter thanking God for his goodness. Your life will be richer as you add both. It will also be better. God doesn’t need our praise or blessings. He instructs us to worship Him because: 1) it’s the only sane response to who He is; 2) because if we don’t, we’ll worship something lesser (and be the less for it); and because 3) it’s a first step to a life of meaning.
One More Thing
Last week, a friend told me I’d missed a benefit of worship – i.e., its utility in defeating evil. When she feels under attack, she sings the doxology, confident that in the presence of praise for God, the enemy flees.
Without Comment
1) The UK appears ready to join Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and some US states in legalizing assisted suicide, per this article.
2) Based on this graph, the percentage of Americans proud of their country is at an all-time low.
3) Amazon will soon have more robots than employees in its warehouses.
4) In 2024, 72% of Gen Z girls listed mental health challenges as an important part of their identity.
5) According to Brad Wilcox’s research, regular church-attending men have the lowest rate of domestic violence of any major group in America, but nominal Christian men (i.e., non-Church attending self-identified Christian males) have the highest rate of domestic violence.
6) US alcohol consumption peaked in 1830, when average Americans drank three times as much as they do today. (9% of US women currently struggle with alcoholism.)
7) Approximately 14% of Americans are 1st generation immigrants and 13% are second. This 27% is among the highest in US history and 2x the percentage of 1970.
Survey Says
Thanks to all who nominated barriers to faith you think I should take up in Lakelight’s apologetics class. Though I’ve yet to select the four topics, I can report that the barrier you recommended most often was the bad behavior and hypocrisy of self-identified Christians. (Ugh.)
WOTW
Honorable mention goes to tokenization (the process of breaking down text into smaller units — like words, phrases, or symbols — so a computer can understand and analyze it). Full honors go to exacale (the term describing computers that can do one quintillion arithmetic calculations/second).
Jesus
David Brooks says his biggest surprise after 13 years of faith is realizing that Jesus is neither “a wispy, ethereal, gentle-faced white guy with two fingers in the air, nor the Oxford Jesus of Lewis and Tolkien. But a total bada##." One hundred years earlier, Dorothy Sayers made the same point more delicately, "We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certifying Him 'meek and mild' and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious ladies."
IS2M
1) Of the SCOTUS decisions this term, the ruling on Catholic Charities Bureau vs. Wisconsin Department of Labor and Industry Review Commission — a 9-0 verdict affirming the right of faith-based organizations to hire in alignment with their religious mission — seems the most underreported and underappreciated.
2) People’s willingness to pay a premium for DoorDash shows either how lazy we’ve become or how wearying modern life has become, or both.
3) I’m encouraged that the ten-year slide in church attendance has stopped (at least for now). But I wonder if it’s because people are embracing Christ or rather bored of the substitutes — e.g., work, CrossFit, self-care Sundays, therapy podcasts, Taylor Swift lyrics and Peloton instructors doubling as life coaches.
Overheard
1) No one in history has suffered more rejection than God.
2) Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.
3) The popular statement, “you cannot give what you do not have,” has a spiritual corollary, “you cannot keep what you do not give.”
Crisis Management
In A Failure of Nerve, Edwin Friedman lists 8 principles leaders should practice in a crisis. I especially appreciated two of them: 1) don’t let the crisis become the axis around which your world revolves and 2) when the same question brings no new information, make a decision.
The Bezos Wedding
Jeff and Lauren have drawn scorn for spending $46M+ on their wedding – which is a bit more than Sheri and I spent 40+ years ago (even adjusting for inflation). Outlandish spending does not frustrate me as much as those who prepare more for their wedding than for their marriage.
Resources
1) Here is the last sermon in our ten-week Rise series. Based on Psalm 134, it explores our need to bless God and our culture’s slide into Gnosticism.
2) BTW, I love this Crowder song, which I think captures some of Psalm 134’s message.
3) On Monday, my 5-minute daily devotions return with a series on Jonah. You can sign up to receive them here. Next fall, I will be using my daily devotions to discuss the Book of Revelation. If you have questions on Revelation (and who doesn’t have questions on Revelation?) send them my way. I will be answering 28 of the most frequently asked.
Closing Prayer
“O Lord, please accept my distractions, my fatigue, my irritations, and my faithless wanderings. You know me more deeply and fully than I know myself. You love me with a greater love than I can love myself. You even offer me more than I can desire. Look at me, see me in all my misery and inner confusions, and let me sense your presence in the midst of my turmoil...Take my tired body, my confused mind, and my restless soul into your arms and let me rest, simple quiet rest. Amen.” (Henri Nouwen - 1932 - 1996)
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