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Where are God's gates?

Psalm 100

Some of the psalms are psalms of lament, which has made them particularly appropriate for study and contemplation during the pandemic. But Psalm 100 is a psalm of rejoicing.

The psalmist imagines crying out with joy to the Lord or making a joyful noise. God calls forth gladness. ‘Come into his presence with singing,’ says the psalm, echoing the exaltation of God by the whole creation, something which we most emphatically cannot do during lockdown and its aftermath.

Just looking around at nature convinces the psalmist that God is for real. Verse 3 says, ‘He made us, and we are his’ or, ‘he made us, we did not make ourselves’. 

The latter meaning has always seemed less likely to translators. Why on earth, they have wondered, would we want to make ourselves? But, in fact, we’ve become used to shaping nature to suit ourselves - cutting down forests to grow more crops, selectively breeding plants and animals, creating urban living and high speed travel as well as super-connectivity. We’ve even thought that we could manage medical risks with vaccines and antibiotics. But we can’t entirely make our own environment, even if that were supposed to be a good thing to do. Coronavirus has been a sharp reminder that - when it comes down to fundamentals - we are created beings, not creators. If, indeed, there is a creator and we are not entirely at the mercy of random natural selection! The psalmist certainly believes that we are under God’s protection: ‘we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.’

Where are God’s courts? Are they the wide open spaces of the fields, forests and fells? Or are they human-made places of worship? If the latter, then we cannot enter ‘his gates with thanksgiving’ and ‘praise’. The psalmist is certainly thinking of the Temple gates and courts in Jerusalem, but the earlier warning that we don’t make ourselves should serve as a warning here.

Perhaps God’s courts are everywhere. Perhaps we can enter them with praise whenever we acknowledge that ‘the Lord is good’ and ‘his steadfast love endures forever.’

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