Faithfulness as Firm as the Heavens

Worship Planning Notes

Focus text: Luke 1:46b-55 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

“I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens” (Psalm 89:2). What an odd turn of phrase. As firm as the heavens? Perhaps from an ancient perspective, the heavens—or the sky—did seem rather firm or fixed, though ancient civilizations studied the movements of the stars, so at the very least, the stellar inhabitants of “the heavens” were not firm or fixed in place. But for us today, what does it mean to declare that God’s faithfulness is as firm as the heavens? Did Artemis II just demonstrate how thin and porous the boundary between Earth and space truly is? Surely, climate change is demonstrating just how volatile the atmosphere can become when we humans don’t tend creation well. None of this sounds like a good description of God’s faithfulness. But perhaps the comparison still works today. Because, for all the variability, volatility, and vulnerability of our atmosphere, it surrounds us still, holding us together as we travel through the heavens. And that…that sounds like God’s faithfulness to me.

That seems appropriate, too, for the Sunday before Christmas Eve, the night we remember that Jesus came in our variability, volatility, and vulnerability as a small baby to show us how we can live in community held together by God’s love and faithfulness. Whether you choose to focus on Luke 1 or Psalm 89 or both, our song today is a song about love and faithfulness, about how God turns things upside down so they will be right side up, about how God keeps God’s promises even when we struggle to be faithful.

What are the signs of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness in your community?

Maybe you play a game of “I Spy” with the children to look for signs of love during the children’s message. (Maybe you play with the whole congregation!) Perhaps you ask people to take pictures of God sightings throughout the week, and you show them in a slide show during part of the sermon. Maybe you turn a few of the pictures upside down to see what you might discover. If God’s love is an anchor in the midst of the storm, the atmosphere holding us together in the vacuum of space, then we have to be able to find it for and with one another. So, tell stories of God’s faithfulness; pray and listen for how God is calling your congregation to love their neighborhood; sing the hymns that celebrate and remember God’s faithful love. Prepare your congregation to go into Christmas ready to encounter Love Incarnate once again, because lying in the manger is the beginning and end and beginning again of God’s restoration song.

Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts Ministries, served as an organist and music minister in United Methodist congregations in the legacy Northwest Texas and North Texas Annual Conferences, as well as the New Day Amani/Upendo house churches in Dallas. After receiving her Master of Sacred Music and Master of Theological Studies degrees from Perkins School of Theology, Lisa earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University, where she researched and wrote on the doctrine of Christ, disability, and atonement.