Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and shall come singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.  Isaiah 51:11.

Another simple song began running around in my head this morning. I could only remember the last few lines until I looked it up.  Took me awhile, as my old NASB concordance is scanty, and I couldn't find the right wording in any transla-tion.... until I simply typed in the words as I remembered them in the song on Google.  Then voila! up it came in all its glory. 

 (I love Google!  When I get to heaven the first thing I think I'll do, after hugging my dad and saying hello to all the precious saints I've known who've gone on before, is thank God for Google, because it has been the pathway for me to so many, many blessings, not the least His Word in umpteen translations.)

"... and come with singing unto Zion..."  I began this journey home with you a few weeks ago.  I had intended to write a piece each week, to recap what I'd learned in the study by Beth Moore,  "Psalms of Ascent".  I had hoped so very much for others to post their insights here as well. But alas, it seems not to be.  Apparently others are not as computer trained as I've become.  What a loss!  But my visions aren't always shared by others.  (Am I whining here?  I'm afraid so... On to better things!)  

Also, I have found this study so very rich that I scarcely have time to reflect over the week before a new astounding truth hits me in the head.  Don't laugh, it's no joke. God is seriously remodeling me here. However, I am learning too much not to continue sharing these insights with anyone who happens to come here, so here's some more from our study of Psalms 120-134.  I will simply have to share them as I remember them in front of this computer, and not worry so much about presenting a well-honed piece of literature.  (Picture a winking happy face here, with a curl right in the middle of her forehead, kind of like this:  6;D).

These last two weeks I've been learning that my presence in this Bible study is not purely a coincidence.  There are too many occurrences throughout each we

ek that coincide with what I'm hearing at the meetings, both from Beth Moore on tape and in the book, and from the other women I'm sharing this journey with.  I continue utterly amazed.

    Session One with Beth by video emphasized the song nature of the Psalms, and discussed how vastly deep God's Word sinks into our hearts when accompanied by music.  Almost all Scripture I still remember from my Baptist childhood remains with me because it is accompanied by a melody I can't forget.  The funny thing is, I don't even remember trying to memorize these Words, because I wasn't trying to memorize words, I simply sang along until I knew it by heart, like any other song.  Only these Words have never left me, because they're attached to a song, and "song is the fluent language of the soul", as Beth tells us.

And how much more we are moved by the Word when it's carried by song to not just our minds, but deep into our souls.  It reminds me of someone plodding through the snow, trying so hard to get somewhere fast!  But as soon as she sets herself up on skis, WHOOSH! off she flies, with almost no effort, it seems.  So God's Word to our hearts on the wings of a song. What a precious way for God to connect with me, a singer, and to show me how precious I am to Him!

Here is another insight that I can't pass up: in Session Two, Beth told us about sour dough. We connect these Psalms with three historic Jewish Feasts.  The focus here was on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which takes place at the end of the Passover Feast and lasts seven days.  It was simply amazing to me, again, the timing of this discussion.  Beth talked about sourdough, and leaven being a lump of dough kept over from a previous baking of bread.  

Wondrously, the week before my daughter had been given some starter dough for Amish Friendship Bread, which in the way of busy teens, she had left for me to care for. You have to knead it every day ("Day 1: squeeze the bag, Day 2: squeeze the bag" etc...).  I had just finished baking two loaves and divvying up the sharing portions before I came to the meeting that night.  (I had meant to bring some starters to share, but of course forgot).  Right here was exactly what I had been doing all week as the illustration for the lesson!  How amazing is that?  Only a minutely personal God who has numbered each of our hairs and formed each cell of us when we were conceived in our mothers' wombs could orchestrate such a "coincidence"!

Coincidence?  Here's another:  at the close of that evening, I had word that a precious sister in Christ and fellow musician in the church had been taken to the hospital with a serious aneurysm behind her eye.  I stayed connected with the prayer chain over this one, praying throughout the night and through the following days, and through her surgery hours.  By the following week I had learned all had gone well with her surgery, and she was so well recovered she was able to go home the same weekend.  Praise be to God!  

"He keeps the Feasts."  But the funny thing was, I actually had on hand a token of friendship to send Nancy, all because my teenager was too busy to take care of her Amish Friendship dough.  Now isn't that something?  

As Beth says in the lesson, sour dough can actually be - well... sour.  Sour dough, as mentioned before, can be a lump "kept over from previous sin".  It got hidden somehow in the new dough... when we weren't looking... when we thought we'd forgiven... when we thought we'd really made the decision to start over new... this lump of sour  sinning was kept over to hold over our husband's head when he did something we didn't like yet again... to remind us we can never do anything without failing... to keep us back from committing to something that could break our hearts all over again...  Sour lumps.  Kept over.

God calls us to throw out the old leaven, to stop keeping over lumps of sour dough and hiding it in the new recipe.  He wants us to stop carrying forward the old, painful debts of our past, and start with a brand new slate.  It's a new day.  It's a new beginning for us.  Only we humans are still using the old dough, still burying the sourness in what we hope to make something new out of.  How can we, trapped in our humanness, possibly throw out the old leaven and start new in this new day??  I could see no way, trapped in my own set of human mistakes.

But praise be to God for His unspeakable grace!!  As Beth says, "He keeps the Feasts". What did God do with His sour dough of Israel? He put Jesus Christ a tiny Babe in the midst of the soured dough of the world.  He buried Him in the sin of humanity, like the unleavened bread he was crushed and bruised for the sake of sinful men and women and children.  "Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and with His stripes we are healed."  I know.  I've been striped.  But He most certainly healed those stripes.  He took our stripes and made them His own.  He fell into the ground and died, to be raised again, the first fruits of the ones who've gone to rest, falling into the ground to be resurrected on the Last Day, my sweet father among them, and one day myself as well.  He became the sweet lump of leaven, replacing our sourness.

As Beth explained, the three great Feasts of Israel represent for Christians three most important, vital truths of God: the Passover - Christ's death, the Feast of Unleavened Bread - His burial, the Feast of First Fruits - His resurrection.  In Beth's words, "He keeps the Feasts".  Wow. Somehow I don't have words for that astounding connection. Think about it in your own words and images for a while... What an amazing God!!

How could we possibly keep from returning, singing, to our personal Zion, where God has showed Himself to us?  For everlasting joy will surely be upon our heads, running down over our shoulders, dripping onto our sore, tired feet, bringing us gladness and joy and driving mourning away forever!  With such a loving Father God as King, who can keep silent?

"Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads!"

Amen!!

And this is only the between lessons lesson of week two.  I'm now in week three, with so much more to share with you!  Come back again next week and see what else the Lord has been singing into my soul.  I hope you do.  And I'd love to see you here, and listen to your song too.  Please share it with me, won't you?

Simply yours,

Patty