Wednesday in the Octave of Easter
Whenever I read today’s passage from Acts, I flash back to a Vacation Bible School many years ago at Kirkmont Presbyterian Church in Beavercreek. This VBS took place in approximately 1998 when my two sons were quite young. The children who attended were given cassette tapes (remember those?!) with recorded music for the week. We listened and sang along in the car so that we could learn the songs they would sing each day, songs that helped to tell the Bible stories that they would learn that week. One of the lessons came from this story in Acts. I can still sing that children’s song in my head, and it’s a part of the chorus that resounds yet today in my heart and my soul. “Walking and Leaping and Praising God, Walking and Leaping and Praising God . . .” As I write these words, the Lord is calling to mind one of my own experiences as a very young girl attending Sunday School at 1st Presbyterian Church, Manhattan, KS. I’m recalling a Sunday morning when our teacher taught us this story about Peter and John and the crippled man using a flannel board and cut-out characters that she placed on the board to tell us, children, the story visually as well as verbally. I’m recalling that it was the “walking and leaping and praising God” response of the healed man that captured my imagination and my heart that day in the late 1960’s. And so, I ask myself, what is it about this man’s response that so captivates me through the decades? I wonder if it might also captivate you this day.
When was the last time you jumped and leaped for joy as you offered your praise to God? Some of us may be unable, physically, to leap about, but can we be just as exuberant in our hearts, minds, and souls as the man in our story today about the love of God in our lives? Maybe a better question is, when was the last time you offered unbridled exuberant praise to God? I believe God intends our praise to be embodied. More than an intellectual acknowledgment of God’s goodness, authentic praise springs from a well deep within us and bubbles out in a flood that flows through body, mind, heart, soul, spirit. Perhaps the reason this scripture passage grabs me so strongly each time is that it’s my very essence that yearns to respond to God like the crippled man. Perhaps I’ve yielded too much to my intellect that taps me on the shoulder and says, be proper, be quiet, practice decorum. Perhaps as I read this passage in the Acts, my very essence leaps and jumps within me and cries be free! Could it be that my soul, created in God’s image, has been artificially crippled, restrained by my mind from being freed to jump and leap before my Creator? Today, I’m asking the Lord to help me to dismiss whatever it is that causes me to feel self-conscious and inhibited so that I can just let go in praise.
How about you? What is your personal experience of praise? With whom do you most closely identify in today’s scripture account? We can find many biblical accounts of people dancing before the Lord as they worshipped. I think my practical application today may be to play some worship music and dance; dance before the Lord in gratitude, praise and adoration for God’s extravagant love and goodness. I invite you to name your own practical application.
I also notice in today’s story that the healed man walks and jumps away from the Temple that day miraculously healed and yet remaining in his material poverty. Yes, his chances of finding employment have just increased dramatically, but his immediate reality is being materially poor and probably very hungry and in need. Nevertheless, he went away rejoicing that the God of the Universe intervened powerfully in his life. Today, I pray that we can each receive God’s healing for the things in our lives that cripple us. I also pray that we not allow our poverty to distract us and rob us of our joy. Each one of us is impoverished in some way – perhaps we have broken relationships, perhaps we suffer from low self-esteem or wallow in negative self-talk, maybe we haven’t fully embraced the reality of God’s love for us and God’s desire to be in relationship with us . . . these are just a few examples of the many ways in which each of us are impoverished in one way or another. Can we, despite our poverty, live as Easter people, full of joy, full of exuberant praise, jumping and leaping before the God who created us in the divine image, loves us unconditionally, and will never leave us nor forsake us. He is Risen! Alleluia! (Just for fun, you can access the children’s song “Walking and Leaping Song” here!)
- Elizabeth Wourms