Psalm 138: 1-8 (links validated 7/13/26a)

In the film The Godfather Part II, we see in flashbacks the rise of the mafia kingpin Don Vito Corleone back in the early 1900s. At one point a friend of Vito’s wife was being kicked out of her apartment because she had been keeping a dog against the apartment rules. So Vito talks to the landlord and pleads the widow’s cause. At one point he says, “And she got rid of the animal that caused all the trouble.” But no, the landlord has already rented to someone else who will pay more rent per month. So Vito takes a wad of money out of his pocket and pays the rent difference for the next six months if the landlord will let her stay. He finally agrees. But then suddenly Vito says, “Oh, and the dog can stay too, right?” (The landlord flies off the handle at this but then after finding out who Vito really is—a man who became the neighborhood’s mafia leader after violently murdering the previous mafia kingpin—both the widow and the dog get to stay. He returns Vito’s money. He even lowers the rent $10 a month from its previous amount!) “Oh, and the dog can stay too, right?” That is not where anyone thought that conversation would end. The last line of Psalm 138 is like that...

Life is sometimes like the Hebrew alphabet: it’s all consonants and no vowels. All by itself, it’s all hard sounds that are impossible to vocalize. Of course, native Hebrew speakers/readers know instinctively which vowel sounds to supply in between which consonants to make the language speak-able and pronounceable. And that is what faith does for all of us, Buechner said: it supplies the vowels that help our lives to make sense. Into the jumble of consonants that our lives throw at us, we are given by grace the vowels we need to make of it all something lovely after all...

The Psalmist’s call to the kings of the earth to join him in praising God made me think of a wonderful novel by Ann Patchett. Bel Canto is about the beauty of music overcoming the divisions of humanity. A multi-cultural group of dignitaries are invited to hear a world-famous opera singer perform at an exclusive dinner party in a third world country. As they sit mesmerized by her “bel canto,” a band of guerillas raid the party and take everyone hostage. For the next 4 months, these ragged rebels hold hostage these important people from all over the world—Japanese, Russians, English, French, Spanish, etc. Throughout that time, the opera singer performs each day and the power of her music draws them all together, captors and captives, poor and rich, male and female. All are transformed by the power of beauty, even as the Beautiful Savior, the King of Creation, will one day re-unite all things (Eph. 1:9, 10).

Though the arrangement of images is completely different, some of the elements are similar: the long basilica-shaped "temple," groups of people. But there are differences as well. In the notes for Harley, the description for Psalm 137: People praising the Lord (left) and the Psalmist standing before a temple; (lower image) people in captivity hold up their hands (left) and a king is given gifts by the hand of the Lord (right). What is missing as you read the text? Do you agree with the identifications of the images?

But my garden had a different lesson. After 20 minutes of pulling the relentless, viney grass, I discovered a clump of garlic had defended a couple of square inches for itself. I must have missed that head of garlic last year. Sometimes when you harvest, the stem breaks, and you just can’t find the luscious head of garlic. After more weeding, I found another, two whole heads of volunteer garlic! I began to separate them and replant them with more space. I was elated because garlic is my one true joy of my garden. As I walked home with my rake and shovel in my squeaky wheelbarrow, a good friend and neighbor walked his dog. He called out, “Hey, there’s the farmer! What’s growing today?” I replied, “Well, I’m a reluctant gardener mostly, and I spent the day weeding, which I hate. But I did find two clumps of volunteer garlic. He gave me the questioning look of someone who grew up in Brooklyn. “What is volunteer garlic? What does it volunteer to do? Will it do your weeding?” I explained that a volunteer in the garden was something that came up on its own. A random seed that fell to the earth and grew. Its nature doing its thing beyond my control, hence a volunteer...

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