Lord God, We Praise You (ELW 558)
1 Lord God, we praise you, now the night is over,
active and watchful, standing here before you;
singing, we offer prayer and meditation;
thus we adore you.
2 Monarch of all things, fit us for your mansions;
banish our weakness, health and wholeness sending;
bring us to heaven, where your saints united
joy without ending.
3 All-holy Father, Son, and equal Spirit,
Trinity blessed, send us your salvation;
yours is the glory, gleaming and resounding
through all creation.
Devotion
I lift up this hymn’s phrase that states in reference to the Triune God, “yours is the glory, gleaming and resounding through all creation.” To resound is to resonate, which is a state created by sound. As a vibrating tuning fork approaches a non-vibrating tuning fork, the second starts to vibrate with the same frequency as the first. They are in resonance when vibrating in concert. In Christianity, God’s tuning fork vibrates steadfastly to the frequency of love. In what some theologians call God’s deep incarnation, connections are drawn between God’s incarnation in Christ and in the broader natural world. God desires to have a resonant relationship with all creatures including us, to get us resonating with God’s frequency of love. Glory results from God generating resonance throughout the whole creation. As St. Augustine wrote, “The glory of God is the human [or, we can add, all creatures] fully alive.”
Prayer
O God of the universe, we praise you for loving the world and creating glorious resonance throughout it. Inspire us to seek resonance with you, with nature, with others, and with ourselves. We pray, as did the mystics of old, in the name of our brother Jesus, who embodies the deep divine wisdom of our sister Sophia. Amen.