Psalm Singing

Thanks to Daniel Foucachon, there are now a number of videos of a Christ Church psalm sing on YouTube.  Not, I hasten to add, the Christ Church that I pastor but our sister church in Moscow, Idaho.  Enjoy!

“Before Thee Let My Cry Come Near” (from Psalm 119)

David Erb’s version of Psalm 149:

“O ‘Twas a Joyful Sound to Hear” (Psalm 122)

Imago Dei

Those who don’t perceive beauty in the face of a Down’s syndrome person are blind to all beauty or are so fearful of difference that they must at once turn away from every encounter with it.  In every face — in even the plainest and the most unfortunate countenances — there is some precious aspect of the divine image of which we are a reflection, and if you look with an open heart, you can see an awesome beauty, a glimpse of something so radiant it gives you joy —Dean Koontz, Seize the Night, 280.

Luxuriating in the Letter

We get at the meaning of baptism not by ignoring the properties of water but by musing on those properties.  Eucharistic theology properly emerges from considering the meaning of meals, of bread and of wine, of broken loaves and full cups.  So, too, we get to the rich and richly varied sensus plenior of the sacramental word not by moving past the letter to a spiritual sense, not by treating the letter as a husk for removal.  We get at the riches of Scripture precisely by luxuriating in the letter, by squeezing everything we can from the text as written — Peter Leithart, Deep Exegesis, p. vii.