Saturday 24 October 2020

Psalm 4

Background

When I first wrote this, I was in the middle of preparations for a toddler’s birthday party. Invitations, cake, balloons and gifts were all in cupboards ready to be sent out. It is an apt image with which to read today’s passage.

These verses are ones of invitation. Imagine them quilled on thick parchment, your name glistening in petrol-blue ink, indelibly scrawled at the top. You are invited. Come, just as you are. Come and worship. Come and join this community of misfits and try-hards. Come and shape your life around Christ and within this community. Come and share your brokenness with the one who brings wholeness. Come and worship together in ways you love and in some ways you don't – but regardless, come and join in the heavenly party.

Like all good parties, let’s not do this alone. The invitation is to join a community of people. We are not invited to individually pursue mindfulness or goodness. The invitation has come at a cost and does not come without its challenge. Let us meet together. Let us encourage each other. Let us spur each other towards deeper and more world-changing love.

In a world where there are so many pulls on our time and where we hold so many responsibilities just ‘to keep the show on the road’, this passage inspires prophetic action: a desire to move towards a Jesus-centred community, rather than the individualism that is so often preferred in our day-to-day culture. Grace is offered to all – corporately as well as personally. Our response, too, needs to be both corporate and personal.

To Ponder:

• Can you encourage someone today? What will you do to celebrate them?
• What have you been invited to recently, and what can you say ‘yes’ to?
• Who can you invite to worship in the coming few weeks? 

First published in 2017.