Steven Croft

Order and Chaos

“The sea is his and he made it, and the dry land which his hands have formed”

There are some times and moments in life when everything feels to be falling apart. Our carefully ordered and constructed world seems to be giving way.  Chaos is breaking in.  It happens when someone we love betrays us; or our lives are disturbed by illness; or we lose income; or floods or some other crisis strikes us.

In those moments we need to remember: the sea is his.  The sea in the bible is not the benign, happy symbol it is to many people in Britain.  The sea is the great symbol of chaos, darkness and disorder breaking in.  The recent floods and tidal surges have brought this kind of chaos to many in our country.

At the beginning of the Book of Genesis in the first story of creation, the earth is without form and void, chaos reigns, and the waters are everywhere.  God creates the world by holding back the waters so that the dry land can appear and be formed.  God’s work of creation is, essentially, bringing order out of chaos. The sea remains throughout the Old Testament a symbol of chaos breaking in to the settled order of our lives.

Other religions in the Ancient Near East saw the universe as a battle ground between equally balanced forces of good and order on the one hand and chaos  and evil on the other.  But Israel’s faith in God went much further.

Israel’s faith came to the place where even chaos was held in God’s hand, even the sea was his creation, even the great sea monsters were his delight and his playthings.

In moments of crisis when chaos rules, the last thing we feel like doing is praising God. Yet praise restores our perspective. As we remember who God is, we move back to the place where we can say in faith, the sea is his and he made it.  In that place we find the calm we need to make good decisions, the solid ground for action and the confidence to begin to move forward again.

“O you of little faith” Jesus once said to the disciples in the boat.  “Who is this?” they said in reply.  The sea is his

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

Highs and Lows

“In his hands are the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains are his also”

Sometimes we praise God by appreciating who he is. We might sing “Immortal, invisible, God only wise”.  Sometimes we praise God by singing out what the LORD has done for us or for all the world. Sometimes we bring God’s greatness to mind by recalling the wonder and scope of creation.

At first reading, this is where we are in verses 4 and 5.  We have praised God’s greatness and now we go on to see that greatness laid out in creation. If the depths of the earth are in his hands, how great must God be?

Take a moment to appreciate God’s greatness in creation.  Imagine the deepest valleys and the highest mountain ranges and remember that nothing and nowhere is outside of God’s creation.  But don’t stop there.

For this verse of the psalm and the next are not just about creation.  The picture of depths and mountain tops are also symbols of the highs and lows in our lives.  There is more than just geography here.

The psalms frequently use this kind of symbolism. Zion (or Jerusalem) is called a mountain.  Jerusalem is indeed built on a series of hills but not very big ones.  The point is that it is spiritually a high and important place where God dwells.  Psalm 23 talks about spiritual experiences in relation to the landscape – the valley of the shadow of death is a hard and difficult place but the psalmist finds God’s love and strength even there.

The New Testament picks up these pictures.  Jesus leads the disciples to a mountain top experience at the transfiguration and then back down into the valley to deal with the daily reality of life.  Paul writes in Romans that “height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (8.39).  In Ephesians Paul prays that we might be able to comprehend “the breadth, length, height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (3.18).

Our Christian faith and the joy God brings is not just for sunny days and mountaintop experiences.  In his hands are the depths of the earth.  His love is with us in the depths of human desolation. The LORD has been there and is there with us.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The Lord is King!

“…the great king above all gods”

There are some points of connection between the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 95. The first is the great stress on today in verse 7, connected with the theme of listening to the word of God.  I’m reminded of the petition, Give us this day our daily bread, with the parallels between bread and the scriptures.

The second is the connection between praising God as the great king in this verse and the great petition in the Lord’s Prayer: your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Many of the psalms in this part of the psalter praise God as king.  Several of them have within them a cry of praise: The LORD has become king. Proclaiming God’s kingship, God’s reign over the earth, was a profound and central part of the worship of Israel when God’s people gathered in the temple.

What is happening when God is proclaimed as king above all gods?  We are proclaiming that God reigns despite the way it feels.  We are restoring God to the very centre of our faith.

The idea of kingship breaks down further into two closely related ideas.  A ideal king in the ancient world was both a might warrior, able to save and protect his people and keep them secure and a righteous judge, able to administer the kingdom internally and especially to protect the poor.

As we proclaim God as king in this psalm, we proclaim these two truths: that God is a mighty savior able to save us from our enemies; that he is a righteous judge, defending the rights of the weak and powerless.

Like those who prayed the psalm in the temple, we proclaim God’s reign as king in times when the world seems all too imperfect and unjust.  It is all the more important in those times to look forward to the day when the kingdom will come in all its fullness, when God will reign, and when the whole world will see that God is a king above all gods.  Psalm 95 is a song of faith and anticipation.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The LORD is the great God

“For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods” (Psalm 95.3 NIV)

In the first word of verse 3 we change gear.  So far the psalm has been inviting and encouraging us to praise God.  It’s a common form in the psalms.  The word “Alleluia” comes from the Hebrew and means, literally, Praise the LORD!

In verses 3, 4 and 5 , the psalm gives us the reason or the grounds for our praise.  We return to a double call to praise again in verse 6 and another reason to praise God in verse 7 before we move into the second half of the psalm, a prophetic oracle, in verses 8-10.

How does the psalm help us appreciate God and what reasons are we given in our summons back to joy?

The first is rooted in God’s greatness and majesty and is a proclamation of God’s might.  The language is very simple.  The truth the words convey is profound.

The God we worship, the God who revealed himself to Moses as the LORD, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the great God, the one true God, above all gods.  His is the author and prime mover and agent in creation.

We need to listen and understand that perspective at so many different levels.  We need to be aware as we come into God’s presence that the LORD is not a projection of ourselves, an idol made with human hands.  It is God who made us not the other way round.  We are part of the universe God created, not the other way round.

God is a God of strength and power and majesty (we will look at the implications of calling God king tomorrow).  It is this God who invites us to know him, to love him, to follow him, to serve him.  It is this God we are called to praise and worship.

Spend some moments today imagining the size of the universe.  God is greater.  Spend some moments reflecting on the age of the universe.  God is greater.  Spend some time reflecting on the greatest human powers you can imagine.  God is greater still.

Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

In all circumstances not for all circumstances

[Let us] be glad in him with psalms Psalm 95.2

The first four verbs in Psalm 95 all summon us to joy:  let us sing….let us heartily rejoice….let us come with thanksgiving….let us be glad in him with psalms.

But what if we don’t feel like rejoicing?  It’s raining and cold outside.  It’s Tuesday and we have to go to work.  The problems we are dealing with are just too many. Or else there is a great grief and sadness in our lives at present.  How then are we to hear this call to rejoice?

The psalms as a whole carry the whole range of human emotions.  If you read them from 1 to 150 you will sense a tension between the major key of praise and the minor key of lament.  Both are given space.  By the end of the psalter, the major key prevails.  But there are many psalms too which give us space to mourn, to wrestle with God, to express our anger and pain and grief.  Jesus picks up and affirms all of them in the most tender of the beatitudes: “Blessed are those who mourn”

So we know from the rest of the Psalms that we are meant to take our own pain and the pain of other seriously.  How then are we to hear the call to joy in the midst of a suffering world?

The key is learning (and relearning through life) a very simple distinction.  It’s a kind of Christian joy 101.  The distinction is between rejoicing for all circumstances (which is a massive distortion) and rejoicing in the LORD in all circumstances (which is the path of grace).

Occasionally we get the two mixed up.  Christians find themselves twisting their emotions to give thanks for difficult things in their lives.  We should lament and grieve and cry out in pain and anger.  Jesus did these things.

But when we have grieved (and sometimes even in the midst of our grieving) we are also encouraged to look for the threads of joy not in the bad circumstances but in the constant presence and love of God, whose mercy endures for ever.

“Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say: Rejoice” writes St. Paul.  He wrote those words from prison, on the brink of losing his life.  He wrote them to a church which was tearing itself apart through needless quarrels.

His words have deep roots in Psalm 95.  Let us be glad and rejoice today not for the bad things but in the LORD.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year.  The first of five clergy conferences on Evangelism begins today. Please pray for us.  

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The power of thanksgiving

Let us come into his presences with thanksgiving(Psalm 95.2)

In her Christmas Day message this year the Queen spoke of the vital importance of reflection in human life.  Standing back and thinking about what has been and what is to come is a vital part of what it means to be human.

Thanksgiving is the simplest form of reflection.  We look back. We think about what has been good in our lives, about those who love us, about all we have received and we say thank you to God our creator and redeemer.

Thanksgiving is a vital antidote to the consumer society. Advertising and business spends millions of pounds each year to convince us that we are not content with life as it is: we need to spend more to be happy.  To live a balanced and contented life in such a world we need to be spending as much time saying thank you as we spend watching adverts. Thanksgiving is a powerful antidote to the pervasive spirit of grumbling which takes hold of the lives of many Christians (and many ministers).   We focus more on what is wrong than what is right.

According to Psalm 95.2, thanksgiving is a most precious way to come into the presence of the LORD.  That might be when we are with others.  But giving thanks to God is also the best possible way to begin our private prayers at the beginning of the day or at its end.

“Be thankful” says Paul in Colossians (3.15).  The original words mean “live eucharistically (eucharist is the Greek word for thanksgiving).  It is no accident that the central act of Christian worship, the eucharist, is a profound act of thanksgiving.  Saying thank you is more a way of living than an action to be performed but this way of life has its roots in daily disciplines.  If you’ve not used it for a while, take some time to rediscover the General Thanksgiving, one of the treasures of Anglican worship (p.405 in Common Worship Daily Prayer and here: General Thanksgiving)

Today is Epiphany.  We see God’s glory revealed in Christ and we give thanks.  It is a remarkable thing to come into the presence of the living God. Come today, with thanksgiving.

Let us come into his presences with thanksgiving(Psalm 95.2)

In her Christmas Day message this year the Queen spoke of the vital importance of reflection in human life.  Standing back and thinking about what has been and what is to come is a vital part of what it means to be human.

Thanksgiving is the simplest form of reflection.  We look back. We think about what has been good in our lives, about those who love us, about all we have received and we say thank you to God our creator and redeemer.

Thanksgiving is a vital antidote to the consumer society. Advertising and business spends millions of pounds each year to convince us that we are not content with life as it is: we need to spend more to be happy.  To live a balanced and contented life in such a world we need to be spending as much time saying thank you as we spend watching adverts. Thanksgiving is a powerful antidote to the pervasive spirit of grumbling which takes hold of the lives of many Christians (and many ministers).   We focus more on what is wrong than what is right.

According to Psalm 95.2, thanksgiving is a most precious way to come into the presence of the LORD.  That might be when we are with others.  But giving thanks to God is also the best possible way to begin our private prayers at the beginning of the day or at its end.

“Be thankful” says Paul in Colossians (3.15).  The original words mean “live eucharistically (eucharist is the Greek word for thanksgiving).  It is no accident that the central act of Christian worship, the eucharist, is a profound act of thanksgiving.  Saying thank you is more a way of living than an action to be performed but this way of life has its roots in daily disciplines.  If you’ve not used it for a while, take some time to rediscover the General Thanksgiving, one of the treasures of Anglican worship (p.405 in Common Worship Daily Prayer and here: …..)

Today is Epiphany.  We see God’s glory revealed in Christ and we give thanks.  It is a remarkable thing to come into the presence of the living God. Come today, with thanksgiving.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The Rock of our Salvation

“let us shout aloud to the Rock of our Salvation”[1]

Here’s a mystery.  Psalm 95 means a great deal to Christians because, to the eyes of faith, there is a reference to Jesus in the first verse.

When Christians worship the LORD, we are, of course, worshipping God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, revealed through the Scriptures and revealed most clearly through Jesus Christ whose birth we celebrate in this Christmas season. Psalm 95 calls us to come with joy to worship not simply our creator or the Father but the God who has saved us in Christ and sustains us in the life of the Spirit.

The phrase Rock of our Salvation is interesting.  For those who used the Psalm in the Temple, the phrase is another name for the LORD (Hebrew poetry works by saying one thing then saying it again in a slightly different way – the two halves of each verse are in parallel). This name for the LORD reminds us of the story of water springing from the rock (Exodus 17.1-7 and Numbers 20.2-13). The name looks forward to the reference to those stories in Psalm 95.8: water sprang from the rock at Massah and Meribah.

But there is more.  The name Jesus means, in Hebrew, salvation.  Remember the angel’s words to Joseph: “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”[2].  Jesus is also called the rock in some parts of the New Testament.[3]  For these reasons, the Latin translation of Psalm 95 literally says this:

“Come let us praise the LORD, let us shout for joy to Jesus our Rock”

The basis for our worship and for our joy today is not only that God has made us but that God has saved us and redeemed us in Christ and calls us to know him as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

[1] Psalm 95.1 NIV translation
[2] Matthew 1.21
[3] See I Corinthians 10.4 which is a commentary on these stories and Matthew 7.24-27

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

A daily turning

Come let us sing for joy to the LORD[1]

Some years ago, I sat quietly in a very old and beautiful church in Barnby Dun, near Doncaster before a service.  Like many old church buildings, it had a deep atmosphere of prayer.  This was one of those thin places between earth and heaven, where people had poured out their hearts to God in joy and sorrow for countless generations.  I wondered as I prayed, which Bible text had been spoken aloud most in this church down the generations.

The answer (I think) is Psalm 95 which for many years was set at the beginning of Morning Prayer and therefore spoken aloud by the clergy and others who came to pray each day.  Psalm 95 for many, many years helped to shape Anglican worship and therefore Anglican identity.

The shaping comes through deliberately turning our lives back to the LORD[2] every day.  Left to ourselves, our hearts drift away from God as surely as a boat is carried downstream by the river’s flow.  We have an inbuilt tendency to turn inwards upon ourselves and away from God’s light and God’s love.

This is why we need to come each day in prayer to the LORD.  If we can, it’s helpful to come at the beginning of each day. Through the words of Psalm 95 we turn our hearts back to the LORD, who loves us, who welcomes us, who calls us by name.

As we make that daily return, the Psalm invites us to come not simply to “God”. We might think of God as an impersonal power who created the universe.  The Psalm invites us to come to the LORD.  This is God’s personal name, revealed to Moses in Exodus 3 and revealed to us.   The LORD wants us to know him by name.  The LORD invites us daily into a personal relationship with our creator through Jesus Christ.

Resolve this coming year to get to know the LORD in deeper ways and to begin each day with a turning back.This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year


 [1] Psalm 95.1 NIV translation

[2] Whenever the LORD appears in capitals in the NIV and NRSV, the Hebrew word it translates is YHWH, God’s name revealed to Moses.

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

The vital importance of joy

The vital importance of joy

“….let us sing….let us make a joyful noise…..”[1]

Psalm 95 is a call to rediscover joy at the centre of our Christian faith, to sing out with joy in our worship and express that joy in the whole of our lives.

The joy of a Christian is not rooted in material goods or success. The joy of a Christian is not dependent on the weather or how life is treating us at present. The joy of a Christian flows from knowing God our creator, from knowing Jesus our Saviour and from knowing the Holy Spirit as our comforter and guide.

It is a joy deeper than any sorrow this world contains.  There is nothing brash, harsh or unloving about joy: it is not indifferent to the pain of others, or the grief of those who mourn, or the trials which come in every life, or the injustices in the world.

Christian joy is gentle and secure.  It flows from the deep conviction and vision that in the gospel of Jesus Christ is a medicine for all the ills of this world.  We call one another back to joy because we share a faith which proclaims that sorrow and sin and pain will not have the last word, because of Christ.  Even death has been defeated.

Pope Francis wrote recently: “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter”[2].  His words, like Psalm 95, call us to come back to the centre: to setting worship and rejoicing in God at the heart of our faith.

The old Westminster Catechism, used for many years to help people understand the faith, begins with this question:  “What is the chief end of man” (where end means both purpose and destiny and man means humanity).  The answer is this: “The chief end of man is to know God and enjoy him for ever”.

[1] Psalm 95.1 NRSV

[2] Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 6

/0 Comments/by
Steven Croft

A threefold invitation

Welcome to 2014.  This year we mark the centenary of the Diocese of Sheffield.  I’m asking the diocese to focus in this first part of the year on a single text: Psalm 95.

I’m planning to post a short reflection Psalm 95 on the blog each day (except Sundays) in January.  It’s a very rich text and has a lot to teach us.

The reflections are in the style of the series Reflections for Daily Prayer and designed to be read as part of your own prayers or bible study or in preparation for a small group discussion.

You’re very welcome to journey with me through January exploring this great psalm. Feel free to print and copy the reflections for others to use.

Wednesday 1st January

A threefold invitation

O come let us sing to the LORD, let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation[1]

Psalm 95 begins with a simple word: “Come” and a three fold invitation.  Some people know the psalm by its Latin title: Venite (which simple means come). The Psalm is an invitation to reset our priorities at the beginning of each new day and to put God in first place again in this moment, on this day, in this New Year.  It’s the most important New Year Resolution we can make.

We need to hear and speak the words three times to begin to understand what they mean.

In the first invitation, I speak them to myself.  We learn to talk to ourselves through the psalms: to ask our own soul questions, or give encouragement or comfort.  At the beginning of the New Year, I remind myself of the priority and importance of worship and prayer and the invitation to live in communion with God, my creator.

In the second invitation, we pray the words together and speak to one another as the Christian community: in a local church, across the diocese, in the Church across the world.  We summon one another to joy, to praise, to worship at the beginning of the New Year. Each of us needs that encouragement, that reminder of what is important in our lives.

But the third invitation is the most important. We sing these words in private and in public as words of invitation to the whole world, to our local communities, to those we know, to anyone who will listen: come and share in the praise and worship of the living God; set your life in the order God intends; be caught up in the praise of heaven.

Come let us sing for joy to the Lord. May this be a year when many, many people rediscover the God who loves them and learn again the joys of worship.

[1] Psalm 95.1 Common Worship translation

/0 Comments/by