Last night I was leading 25 Jesus-loving teenagers in a brief devotion using Psalm 136. This Psalm is a ready-made responsive reading, with each phrase followed by the statement "His love endures forever."
Going around the room, each student would read one line of the Psalm and then the whole group would respond with an energetic "His love endures forever!" and so on until the last verse.
After finishing this exercise, I simply emphasized the point that in back of everything, is the fact that His love endures forever. Then, everyone was given a blank sheet of paper with the phrase "His love endures forever" printed on it several times. I told the kids that this was their opportunity to write Psalm 136 version 2.0. It wouldn't be Scripture, of course, but it would be their response to and interaction with the Word and an opportunity for them to realize that in the warp and woof of their lives, it is evident that God's love endures forever.
As it happened, my 9 year old son was in the room with us and was listening in. He grabbed a sheet and filled out his own list. (As a preface for what's to come, this little boy of mine, our fifth son, has had numerous physical challenges from his in utero days to the present due to ARPKD and severe asthma. He's been on the brink more than once.)
Here is my boy's Psalm 136 version 2.0:
Helped me when I was a baby
His love endures forever
gave me a church
His love endures forever
gave me a Family
His love endures forever
gave me Friends
His love endures forever
gave me a sun
His love endures forever
gave me his Son
His love endures forever
gave me a school
His love endures forever
That kid gets it.
4 comments:
very cool.
le'olam chasdo!
literally, to eternity, His chesed!
His loving kindness is forever!
His mercy is forever!
His grace is forever!
His covenant faithfulness is forever!
His loyal devotion is forever!
His steadfast passion is forever!
all these would be reasonable translations for chesed, and amen and amen to each and all of them!
a nice article here: http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Meditations/Confession_of_Praise/confession_of_praise.html
Beautiful! That adds so much richness and depth to an already marvelous statement.
Ok thank you for making me bawl my eyes out! I was actually going to be productive after this and now I can barely even see my screen my eyes are so leaky! Please just send that little boy down here so I can hug him :)
It's alright, I cried too...Just a little. And you can't have him. :)
Post a Comment