\u201cRemember, O LORD, your compassion and your loving kindnesses, for they have been from of old.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s an old proverb here in the southern United States: \u201cWhen you\u2019re up to your waist in alligators, it\u2019s hard to remember the original objective was to drain the swamp.\u201d<\/em> We all have times when it seems we\u2019re up to our waist in alligators, flailing around, fearful of predatory persons or forces, unable to remember how we came to this critical moment. This is especially true for God\u2019s faithful. As we respond to God\u2019s promise of resurrection to new life, a new world, a kingdom coming in which Jesus reigns, we encounter mighty resistance from our own sin, death and the devil. We believers find ourselves \u2018up to our waist in alligators\u2019.<\/p>\n That was the experience of the psalmist who wrote, \u201cRemember, O LORD, your compassion and your loving kindnesses, for they have been from of old.\u201d( Ps. 25:6)<\/em> The psalmist was up against ominous adversaries, trying to bring him down from his high calling to serve God among God\u2019s people. As the vision of his vocation became blurred in the battle to survive, he called out to the One who called him, the One whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 spelled faithfulness through the years. Maybe it was more like scream therapy than our anemic prayer recitations. The total psalm reveals a soul expressing both the terror of potential humiliation in defeat as well as a centering hope in the Lord whose history is compassion and loving kindness going way back, well known among his people.<\/p>\n It sounds like a primitive theology, hoping God won\u2019t forget who he is and what he is like just when we\u2019re trying to remember what we\u2019re doing in this frightful swamp full of \u2018gators. Can God forget? Aren\u2019t we the ones that need to remember? Isn\u2019t it our amnesia that needs repair?<\/p>\n My father had severe dementia in the final years of his life. At times he couldn\u2019t remember my name, where he was, or how to find his room. It was tragic to see the main man in my life become a fumbling, frail shadow trying to find himself. I struggled with mixed feelings of compassion for him in his frailty and my own sense of loss \u2013 loss of a father, an irrational feeling of abandonment. We have the same feelings with our Ultimate Father, times when we wonder if he knows what he\u2019s doing, times when we feel abandoned to predatory persons and forces in our personal swamp. Then the primitive cry of the psalmist becomes our cry. \u201cRemember, O LORD, your compassion and your loving kindnesses, for they have been from of old.\u201d Live up to your r\u00e9sum\u00e9, Lord! We have a history together. Be true to yourself!<\/p>\n We go way back, our God and us. Way back to Abraham and his strange call; \u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father\u2019s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing\u2026in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.\u201d <\/em> That promise of blessing goes way back \u2013 \u201cfrom of old\u201d. But it\u2019s always new when Jesus speaks to us of his Father and the coming kingdom for which he lived and died. \u201cBlessed are you poor in spirit for the kingdom of the Heavens is yours.\u201d In our poverty and moral bankruptcy, Jesus promises a supreme inheritance in which God reigns victorious. In Jesus, God\u2019s original objective becomes clear again as he speaks the Blessing to the hungry, the powerless and the persecuted. He invites us to pray for a kingdom coming in which God\u2019s will \u201cis done on earth as it is in heaven\u201d \u2013 beginning with us. Faithful to that calling, we also pray \u201cdeliver us from the evil one.\u201d For in seeking first the kingdom of God, we take up a cross for a cause that makes waves, rocks the boat and upsets the status quo. Enmity and enemies are expected for God\u2019s faithful. But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is big enough to love even our enemies, \u201cfor he causes his sun to shine on the good and evil and his rain to fall on the ungrateful and the thankful. Be merciful even as your Father is merciful.\u201d<\/p>\n Jesus is God\u2019s ultimate Sign that God remains true to his Promise. He remembers his loving kindnesses. The kingdom has come \u2013 in Jesus. The ultimate shape of our humanity has been disclosed \u2013 in Jesus. The truest form of community has been launched \u2013 in Jesus. And we are invited to a foretaste at the Table of our Lord. With his body given as the bread of our lives, with his blood shed to fill the covenant cup of our reprieve from guilt and death, we are called to \u201cremember\u201d. To remember all that God has been to us and for us in Jesus, and in remembering him to be re-membered as his living body in the world today. The vocation is now ours to live the faith of Abraham, believing that Salvation and Shalom are promised beyond the empty promises of empire and the risks of our wilderness journey. We are the called ones to be the \u2018light of the world, a city on a hill that cannot be hid.\u2019 We are the chosen ones, commanded to \u2018love one another as I have loved you. By this all will know that you are my followers.\u2019<\/p>\n I recently attended a Jazz concert featuring the Dave Brubeck Quartet which was celebrating his 85 birthday. As I contemplated this silver haired master, almost too frail to stand without a hand on the piano, I was awed by his undiminished passion to perform and create fresh music. In the first half of the concert, he took the microphone to remember some recent history. His agent surprised them by booking 15 engagements in England. \u201cThis may look like a small country to you\u201d Dave noted, \u201cuntil you have to travel by bus between every engagement, sleeping in a different bed every night.\u201d The agent promised that soon they would perform in London and several \u2018flats\u2019 had been secured for their comfort, suites that would allow them to settle in for a few days relief from bouncing bus rides. Surprise! Every London engagement from their \u2018flats\u2019 required a two-hour bus ride both coming and returning. Dave smiled wryly as we laughed in sympathy. He then announced the label of their new jazz CD. \u2018 London Flat, London Sharp\u2019. Here is a spirited senior who knows how transform the trials of his journey into another contribution to the symphony of life, the cosmic concert of creativity that God has invested in each of us. Like the psalmist, the true vocation of this artist was not defeated by the trials of this \u2013 and many past tours. Instead, it gave him one more opportunity to bless as he has been blessed.<\/p>\n And so we also who journey on this Lent can transform, and be transformed in every trial, to go on blessing as we have been blessed.<\/p>\n Reminiscere | February 20, 2005 | Psalm 25:6 | Arnold Hilpert | \u201cRemember, O LORD, your compassion and your loving kindnesses, for they have been from of old.\u201d There\u2019s an old proverb here in the southern United States: \u201cWhen you\u2019re up to your waist in alligators, it\u2019s hard to remember the original objective was to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,2,727,1744,157,853,108,110,1106,349,109,682],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-10354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psalmen","category-at","category-archiv","category-arnold-hilpert","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-025-chapter-025","category-kasus","category-predigten","category-reminiszere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24230,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10354\/revisions\/24230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10354"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=10354"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=10354"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=10354"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=10354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Rev. Arnold Hilpert
\nJacksonville , Florida
\nHilpertarn@worldnet.att.net<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"