Psalm 119:1-8

Psalm 119:1-8 
English Standard Version (ESV)

 God is at work.  God is at work in your life, in your heart and in your home and in your workplace and in your relationships.  God is calling you deeper into the waters of discipleship, that you might entrust yourself to God and allow the waters to wash over your feet and your hands and your life, that you might know and understand the depths of God's love and the breadth of God's claim on your life.  Like the sun on a warm summer morning, rising above the hills and desperate to bathe the world in warmth and light, God is seeking to enfold all of you in grace, and God is inviting you into a relationship that is deeper and richer than anything you can imagine.
  And so every day, we seek God.  Our hearts and our minds and our lives seek God and God's guidance, that we might follow God faithfully and understand how God is at work.  We want to know the next step in our walk of faith, so we might grow as disciples and access more of the abundant grace and love God has for us.
  In the midst of life, we find struggles.  There is death of loved ones and friends and family, and we wonder where God is in the chaos and dark of night.  We shrink into the pain and a community gathers around us, uncertain of the answers but confidant that God is still there.  God did not shrink from death in the Bible, and God doesn't turn from it in the here and now.  I don't understand how God is at work, but I believe that God is, because I have read the end of the Gospels -- we worship a God who cannot be contained by the tomb and by death.  Sin itself cannot hold God, and so we place ourselves in the grip of a sovereign God who can crush sin and death in the palm of his powerful and righteous right hand.
  Death still lingers, reminding us all of what it once was, threatening to cause dismay, stealing our loved ones from this present realm, sowing chaos in this place.  I cannot say that I understand how God is at work, and my heart weeps with those who mourn the death of loved ones taken too soon.  What I do believe, along with the saints of old, is that the God who emerged from the tomb on the first Easter morning still has power over sin and death, and this God calls us into discipleship today, encouraging us to take up our cross, to confront the waning power of death and proclaim a confidence in resurrection and a kingdom that will have no end. 
  I know not when my life will be taken from me, but I know that it will pass through the grasping fingers of death, a power that has no claim upon me, and into the hands of God almighty, who will smile at the presence of God's child that God has crafted in the womb and returned from a pilgrimage to worship in the Kingdom of God forevermore.  I will discover, upon reflection, that in fact I never left the providence of God.  While my adventures (and misadventures) have taken me to the precipice where I wondered if God was still present, in fact I was only staring into the depths that I could glimpse  from my perch in the folds of God's hand, where I was safe and covered in the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.  There, in that place, I was made and have dwelt and will forever worship the King who has welcomed me home, the father who enfolds the Prodigal Son in loving arms, the mother who shelters her beloved under the shadow of her wings, the crucified Savior who lays down his life for those whom he loves, the Shepherd who seeks me when I am lost.
  Death calls for me, it reaches for me, it whispers to me in the depths of night, but a greater voice, a stronger power, has already staked its claim on my life, and I shall not be moved, not by the greatest army that might rise in this world, for the Kingdom of light shall be my home, and I will dwell with my King forevermore.
  And so death still is, but life is greater, and it shall stand eternal.