Announcing love at daybreak

David sings to God in the 92nd Psalm (in the Message interpretation): "What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks, to sing an anthem to you, the High God! to announce your love each daybreak, sing your faithful presence all through the night ..."

My wife, Mary, and I prayed together last night before we drifted away into what for me was my first real night's sleep in almost a week. We gave thanks for all God had done for this family in the past week, bringing me through the fire of major illness while bringing us all closer together, showing me that my young ones are not children any longer but off-spring. They are adults, and I thank God for them.

David goes on to write, "You made me so happy, God. I saw your work and I shouted for joy. How magnificent your work, God! How profound your thoughts."

I use this Psalm for this reason, this notion of profound thoughts. I love the peace found in them, even when some of the writing isn't particularly peace-filled.

I am not a deep thinker, though I often do think deeply. In other words, I have plenty of good questions and a couple good answers. I love God and narrow my theology to Jesus' wonderful but difficult edict to love God with all me (my heart, mind, soul and strength) and my neighbor as myself. I had plenty of time to think much of this through last week as I lay isolated, alone, bare in every sense of the word, in ICU. Whatever strength you think you have is ripped away when the word bedpan is used.

Here's what I learned.

A) I don't love myself all that much because I'm never satisfied with my output, my successes, my work for God or myself or the family or whatever. What some see as spiritual successes, I often see as spiritual break-evens. I must learn more about surrender, always.
B) I love God, but it comes with self-imposed limits, as if to give myself totally would extinguish myself from the equation. I must learned more about surrender, always.

In other words, I love myself, I don't love myself; I love God, I don't totally surrender to God.
 It's up the down staircase in my existence. Last week we went down. This week? We'll see. Doctor's appointment today.

Most of these thoughts come with expiration dates. I think these thoughts on this date, April 12, but they might expire on April 13, thrown into the heap of stinking thinking that carried me for a couple decades.

I'm hopeful in the worst sort of way, I find. I might surrender more tomorrow. I might love more tomorrow. I might love less or surrender less. That does seem, by the way, the pattern: The more surrender, the more love. But hope isn't about delaying what must be inevitable. Jesus doesn't allow for "someday" surrender. Surrendering to him doesn't come with a monthly payment plan.

But David was able, though living the same sort of up-and-down life we all have, to constantly look upward instead of looking around. By doing that, David gives me (that word again) hope.

"God is King, robed and ruling," David screams to the heavens. "God is robed and surging with strength," David laughs into a bitter cave that his King, Saul, sent him into.

Then in the middle of the 93rd Psalm, David takes a moment to look around:  "Sea storms are up, God; Sea storms wild and roaring; Sea storms with thunderous breakers." But..."What you say goes -- it always has ..."

This much I have learned (again) in the past week. No matter how delirious I was, I remember constantly praying, almost a mantra. I prayed for help, though my mind was temporarily lost. I prayed for family, though I was completely paranoid that my wife was out to get me.  I prayed for me, over and over and over, completely helpless and completely without worth at one point.

That's what must be our lives.

Through it all, we sing. Through it all, God is ruling from High Heagven, even in, maybe especially in, our ICU rooms. Through it all we announce love at daybreak. What a wonderful start to a day that God created for us.

Anyone in their right mind would see that.