Page 90 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

shouts of acclamation and bowing at my father’s shoes. He was literally worshiping us
and attracting the attention of everyone on the street.
This, I imagine, is how our God sees us – as miserable creatures in desperate need of
his help. But rather than asking for what we truly need, rather than desiring what he is
able and willing to give, we settle for lesser things.
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Bill and Grace Harding went to Ethiopia to dig wells and to share the gospel. Due to
the Marxist rule, the only way they could get into the country was through the well-
drilling project. Then glasnost came to Eastern Europe. The new openness in the
communist world filtered quickly into Ethiopia, then a Soviet satellite on Africa’s edge.
The change was incredible. Suddenly the long silent, underground church broke loose
from its chains with an outburst of joy. Church doors, long barred, were opened. Hymns
were sung enthusiastically. Bibles were read out loud. It was as if a wilting flower had
been given new life.
When the church leaders boldly came to us suggesting we use a meadow in front of
our home for the first church conference gathering in eight years, we readily agreed. We
assumed we’d have a thousand or so gathered from the underground churches in our
district. Imagine our surprise when 10,000 showed up… Never will we forget the singing
and preaching for those four days. The people were so hungry to hear the Word of God
that they listened for up to six hours at a time, often in a deluge of rain.
After a long day, before we went to bed..., I took a last look out the window. We
watched people trying to find a dry place to spend the night. For some, bed was a hard
wooden bench; for others, a banana leaf.
As we slept in our warm dry bed, we were awakened by a loud clap of thunder and
rain pounding on our tin roof. Then we began to hear another. The sound of their voices,
rising above the wind and the rain, came from all corners of the compound like an
antiphonal choir, praising God in song…
Many had undergone persecution and suffering, and now they were praising God in
their joy at meeting publicly for Him. Praising God for the rain. Praising God in spite of
their discomfort.
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.
The apostle Paul wrote, “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and
admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit, singing to God
with gratitude in your hearts (Col. 3:18). He reminds us that the Psalms were the hymnbook that Jesus
used. Paul would have prayed and sung them from his earliest years. The early Christians worshiped God
within a psalm-shaped world. Perhaps, whether we live in Africa or the United States, we would do
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well to include Psalms in our personal worship and in our corporate worship. How else might we follow
the Spirit’s leading to “speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit” and “to sing
and make music from [our] hearts to the Lord (Eph. 5:19)”?

149 Skye Jethani, The Divine Commodity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 113-114.
150 Grace Harding with Dotise Corwin, “Ethiopia: Our Ministry, Our Home,” SIMNOW, Fall, 1991, 3-4.
151 N. T. Wright, The Case for the Psalms, 11.
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