Sing your song across our land
This lofty city tumbles to the ground. It is trampled underfoot by the needy, by the footsteps of the poor. The Lord humbles those in high places.
– From Isaiah 26
This Hebrew Labor Day parade does not lead to the Kremlin or the City Hall; it leads up the hill to the temple. And we the people, finally brought up and down and all together, we sing the words of Psalm 118, “O Lord, grant salvation! O Lord, grant prosperity!”
But this is not for me; it is for all of us. You sing for me, I sing for you: “We bless you from the house of the Lord.” Finally there is no hurry; God’s done the work, and we rejoice. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has given us light!” We all have more than enough.
Tell this story to the little matchgirl, just before, frozen at midnight, she dies. No one bought her matches, she found a corner behind the busy street, and as she rested she heard her grandmamma, calling to her from heaven. The girl’s eyes cleared, and there she was.
Tell this story to Ivy, college senior, frightened and sick. She doesn’t think she can trust even her parents, and she kind of wants to die.
And tell this story too, tell it up toward the kings and queens of commerce, the kings of politics, the queens of society who hold everything and compare it to themselves, who claim as theirs so much of everything we touch and feel and see and hear and taste. This story is for them too.
And then, there’s me. I’ve lived here seventy years, and I know how much I take for granted, reserve for myself, remove from others. I’m grateful for words to confess, but I know how cheap they can be when nothing changes in the way I live.
It is God who does this trampling, straight along the streets of Zion. The needy and the poor, no longer downtrodden, follow in those footsteps, trying to keep up with God’s Giant Step.
I think of the old song, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, “He is trampling out the vintage of the where the grapes of wrath are stored, he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.”
Was Julia Ward Howe, caught up in her dream, thinking only of Union victories? Surely not. We all cry out to be trampled by the Father who made us, not for drinking and not to death, but for the joy of being held and being made, finally, One.
You, O Lord, are the one who shows me how to put my money where my mouth is. Open all my pockets, turn them out, and let me share all that you have given me. Your mercy endures forever!
 “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Julia Ward Howe, November 1861
In her Reminiscences, she wrote: “I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, “I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.” So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pencil which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.” (from Wikipedia)
https://www.davesandel.net/category/advent-and-christmas-devotions-2019/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archive.php?year=2019
