Joyce Borger

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me” begins the familiar words of Psalm 139. The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE) titles this psalm, “An Inescapable God.” To me the word “inescapable” has negative connotations. We’ve been taught to value freedom and privacy. Being known, really known, is a scary notion. There is a part of each of us that is afraid of being known because we fear the anticipated rejection, certain we aren’t good enough. But yet, God knows us. All of us. Parts of us that we ourselves don’t even want to acknowledge. God knows us. All of us. Even the parts that we manage to hide from others.

As a parent and educator I relate to Psalm 81. How often haven’t we thought or said, “if only my child or my student would listen to what I say, this would be so much easier for them.” And yet again and again you feel like your voice is little more than that of an adult in a Charlie Brown episode—noise in the background. In Psalm 81 we hear the heartwrenching cry of God about God’s people, “If only they would listen!”. The unspoken question for those hearing the psalm today is whether we will unstop our ears or treat God’s voice like annoying background noise.

What follows is a re-praying of Psalm 71. It isn’t so much a paraphrase as a prayer based on the psalm. Like the psalm, this prayer uses the single personal pronoun, but that doesn’t preclude it from being a communally articulated prayer. The refrain “Life is full of trouble —yet I trust in you, my God” is not a part of the psalm but added as a rhetorical device.

Many of us can resonate with Psalm 80’s plea to God to “hear us,” “restore us,” and “save us” intermingled with the gut-wrenching question “how long?”. It doesn’t take much pastoral imagination to think of ways in which members of our community relate to this psalm and what occasions have brought the lament “how long?” onto their lips. For that reason it is an important psalm to turn to again and again and worth exploring in its entirety.

Who of us wants to hear words of critique even when they are true and spoken in love? Our natural instinct is to rebuff such words and deny their veracity. At the same time, few of us know how to offer true words of critique and prefer to avoid them. We often do the same in worship, especially when it comes to the prayers of confession…However, words of hope and grace are meaningless if we don’t understand just how mired we are in sin. What’s more, calls to live lives of justice and grace are missing their mark if we leave the bar too low.

We need to dwell on difficult passages like Psalm 50. We need to hear God’s words of judgement in order to change our ways and receive God’s message of hope and abundant grace.

Is there anything worth celebrating?

When the news cycle is increasingly horrific and our communities are being torn apart, the church needs to be a carillon ringing out the good news of salvation and hope. Use Psalm 107 as an opportunity to share the good news by giving opportunity for those gathered or for pre-selected folks to share their testimony of how they have experienced the redemptive power of God. And may all God’s people join together in praise, for God’s love is steadfast and endures forever.

These resources for the opening movements of a worship service use language from Psalm 85 and develop the themes of that psalm as well.

“Listen to the promises of our Holy God—
God has covenanted with us
that all who are faithful will flourish.
God will not let us remain in our sin,
but, through Christ, all who believe will be saved.
More than that, God remains with us.
God is with us here, now, and forever!”

We speak Psalm 52 in solidarity with all who are experiencing the treachery of unjust people and systems. We speak it today as a warning to ourselves to choose the way of righteousness because a life of injustice leads to eternal death. We speak it today to remind ourselves that though the unjust may seem to have the upper hand, “The steadfast love of God endures forever."

Psalm 82 is a psalm for all those who are victims of injustice and those who stand in solidarity with them…Psalm 82 is a message for all people who hold power, which I would argue is the vast majority of us. Each of us has spheres of influence whether or not we have an official leadership title. And, therefore, all of us have the responsibility to speak loudly to those who are in leadership and have unjust practices, lest we become complicit.

Psalm 30 is David’s testimony of praise to God for rescuing him from a period in his life in which he was overcome with despair. What follows is a reinterpretation and reorganization of the Psalm as a monologue. It is interspersed with the congregational song representing God’s voice, “Don’t Be Afraid” by John Bell.

We hold our breath while deep in our soul we may be crying out to God, “Where are you God? When will it end?”

For all those times when we feel like we are holding our breath while our soul cries out, we need Psalm 77: an invitation to bring our laments to God, to remember God’s faithfulness, and give thanks for all that is good.

The psalmist’s encouragement to lean into hope is not wishful thinking based on some abstract concept but arises out of past experiences. God was faithful in the past; there is nothing to suggest God isn’t faithful in the present or won’t be in the future. The doubt, the questioning, the struggle, arise out of the context of a deep faith.

This is why it is so important to retell the stories of God’s faithfulness, to bear testimony of God’s greatness. It is even more important to tell those stories during difficult times. “These things I remember…” Such testimonies become songs in the night.

Psalm 8 is often seen simply as a psalm of praise to God for all creation, and it is that. But it also describes the right ordering of that creation and the relationships within the created order. While it is a wonder to acknowledge that humanity is seen as a little lower than the angels, it is also sobering to understand the responsibility that comes with that honor. In Christ, God has provided us with an example of what that responsibility entails—seeking the flourishing of all and being willing to be serve, putting others ahead of self.

I pray that the echoes of Sunday’s praises will continue into Eastertide and be the background against which we look at this world. And I pray that our worship will make room for both our laments and our praises, acknowledging that they can exist simultaneously in our hearts and our songs. As individuals and worshiping communities spend time this week considering the created world as part of Earth day, it seems particularly appropriate to offer these alternative stanzas to “This Is My Father’s World.”

Are you looking for resources for Advent and Christmas? You are sure to find something at ReformedWorship.org with hundreds of resources from series that provide services for each week, to lessons and carols, Longest Night or Blue Christmas services, children’s pageants, to advent candle lighting—we have it covered. All of these resources are a gift to you and available for free.

 A prayer for the Sunday after the presidential election in the United States but could be adapted for other contexts. 
“Creator of the universe, Lord of this time and  place…”

Whether or not you mark this coming Sunday as Trinity Sunday in your church, given the significance of the Trinity to our Christian faith it ought to receive attention in our worship. Here is a beginning list of songs to consider for use with such a service as well as an outline for the beginning of worship. 

So often in the telling of the gospel story we forget the role of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost Sunday is an opportunity for us to offer a healthy corrective as we acknowledge the role the Spirit played in creation, in the renewing of all living things, in our prayers, our salvation, and our resurrection hope.

As you plan for Ascension Day and Pentecost services, consider adapting one of these resources for your own context.

As I read through the lectionary readings for this season, many of them centered around love: God’s love for us and the call of Christ’s followers to love each other. Thus, that refrain echoes throughout these resources.. Another theme that began with Mark’s account of the women at the tomb is that of doubt and faith and how closely the two reside in each of us.

As we enter the final week of Lent and begin to think more seriously about the Sunday after Easter here are some resources to adapt for your context or use as inspiration.

On Ash Wednesday instead of looking at the dark that surrounds us from the comfort of a lit room we sit in darkness, and see the light.

Are you looking for resources for your Ash Wednesday worship and the Sundays of Lent? Whether you are looking for an entire series, a prayer, litany, or other creative idea Reformed Worship has something for you! Check out just a few of the resources available online at ReformedWorship.org.

God-shaped change won’t happen without prayer. To be an agent of such change one must rely on prayer—fervent daily prayer. Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of prayer. In this blog we share one of them.

We fear saying the wrong thing, being judged, or labeled. We wonder if we shouldn’t know more, have some sort of expertise before praying. But as those given the priestly task of leading our people in prayer it is so important that we courageously step into the space of the both/and.

For those who use the lectionary, Year A brings us to Matthew 2 and the slaughter of the innocents. This is a difficult pericope and one that you might be tempted to skip over in lieu of Epiphany’s light. But there are important theological reasons to remember this part of the Christmas story and include it in your worship services. If you are struggling with how to do it, here are a few practical helps.

I am reminded to be grateful for God’s gift of plenty and pray for those in need whenever I see a pumpkin.

Recently someone asked me what five songs I think are important for every child in the church to know; songs that they would memorize and carry with them throughout life. What a wonderful, thoughtful, question! As I considered my response I wondered if it wouldn’t be more helpful to provide a list of things to consider when choosing songs to sing than an actual list of songs; that way the church could create a list that fit their context. So after some thought, here is a list of things I would consider when creating a core group of songs for children.

I’ve been thinking about the spiritual discipline of waiting lately as we are working on the next issue of Reformed Worship and waiting is one of its themes. Sometimes our waiting is short lived like when the Amazon package arrives on my doorstep early, even before I had begun to wait. And sometimes our patience is tested as it seems that the waiting knows no end.

“I pray that we will remember that on Easter Sunday we proclaimed a unified gospel message one that needs to continue to unify us as together we work to bring Christ’s healing to a hurting and divided world.”

But the light is here. It has come into this world we just need eyes to see. So look up and out.

As pastors and worship leaders we may need to remind ourselves and those we lead in worship that our joy is rooted not in our immediate context but the much larger story of redemption.

God’s got you. You are not alone. God’s got you and God isn’t afraid of your fears and wonderings, your anger and questions, your weariness.

Worship practices during the COVID-19 pandemic have opened up opportunities for worship leaders to reflect the principles and the most important elements of corporate worship.

During this Advent season, are you the one knocking or the one invited to express God’s love and mercy and open the door?

My daughter and I took a road trip one summer and because I wanted some scheduling freedom we didn’t book campsites ahead of time. Given just how many campgrounds there are I naively thought we would have no problem securing a site each night. How wrong my assumptions were and as place after place said they were full I felt my anxiety rising.

The anti-idolatry response [to worship’s “de-Christianizing of God’s people] is to make sure that our worship leaders and planners from pastors to musicians, artists, tech, liturgists and elders, and yes also those gathered, understand that it is God who calls us to worship, it is the Holy Spirit who enables our worship, and it is Christ who perfects it. 

Is it ever OK to be intentionally exclusive in worship? 

I’ve been having this internal argument of late about whether or not it is ever OK to make a worship decision that you know will result in some demographic being left out when it is within your power to be more inclusive? In other words, is it ever OK to be intentionally exclusive in worship?

Think through these scenarios with me:

Even in the midst of falling steeples, in the face of the crucified Messiah, in our own baptismal drowning we are assured that the church won’t fall.

Like many people around the world, my social media feed has been filled with images of the burning Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France. Knowing its history and having been privileged to visit it many years ago I was saddened by its partial destruction and can understand the grief of those with closer ties. As I watched the video of the falling cathedral spire the words of this hymn came to mind:

I am excited that Reformed Worship is beginning a weekly blog and absolutely thrilled at the group that we have gathered to write.  They are a diverse group of practitioners, academics, musicians, and theologians; what connects them all is their love for the church and worship that is thoughtful, relevant, rooted, innovative, global, contextual, creative, and disciplined. 

-Rev. Joyce Borger, editor

Kevin Adams​