sermons
Praying with the Psalms
Back in Love with Jesus
Lydia Shiu
Feb 08, 2026
There’s a story of a man, when his son turned 12, they kind of lost their closeness and they weren’t really able to have conversations and finally they stumbled on texting as a way to keep some connection even though he abhorred it. It was in the early days of texting. So he caught on some. His son taught him some abbreviations, but he says the one he didn’t have to teach me. Because it was so self-evident was LOL. And I knew right away that it meant Lots of Love because he put it at the end of every message he sent me. So he says, such a beautiful telegraphic abbreviation for the 20th century, like a little arrow of love. You can send out to anybody you know.
Then he describes the next six months, his infatuation with instant messaging and it’s kind of power of emotional transmission so he sent LOL to everyone. He knew his sister was getting a divorce and he wrote to her, You know we’re all behind you and beside you. LOL. Your brother. He says my father got ill. I sent him lol. Everyone I knew at work, at home, everyone I sent them lol. He said he happened to be texting his son from an airport saying how much he hated being away but he had to travel to make the money they needed as a family and he signed it off, lol.
And his son responds,
Dad, what exactly do you think LOL means?
Well Lot of Love, obviously.
No Dad, it means Laughing Out Loud, and his world kind of crumbled. He went through every message in his mind, all the LOLs sent to people while they were suffering.
I share this story to start because reading the Bible often can feel like we’re peering into someone else’s text box, without fully knowing what they meant, and honestly applying a whole lot of what we think it means to what we just read.
So I’m going to read today’s text, Psalm 103, with some contextual edits.
Here’s what I mean.
Verse 1
Let my whole being bless the Lord!
Okay stop right there. We didn’t even get through halfway through verse 1 and I already have to stop us. Most of you know the “Lord” is referring to God. But also, what do we think of when we hear the word Lord? What is a Lord?
Lord means
“someone or something having power, authority, or influence; a master or ruler.”
Use it as a verb and it’s
“act in a superior and domineering manner toward (someone).”
I’ve never known any Lords in my life, except for a Landlord. It makes me think of Lord of the Rings or some other buff Englishman in movies. I imagine Bridgerton like setting, curtsying in a ball gown, “My Lord.”
But the original language didn’t say Lord.
Then why did it get translated as such?
In Hebrew it actually says,
יְהוָ֥ה
Which says Yahweh…. kind of. Actually the ancient Hebrew texts didn’t include vowels, which are like the little dash, the tiny T looking thing, and the two dots, were vowels that were added LATER, in what they THINK how the word might have been pronounced.
All it originally had were the consonant letters,
יְהוָ֥ה
YHWH
Some scholars point to these breath consonants י-ה-ו-ה (Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh), that the living God is the breath of life, as close to us as our own breath, who lives in us and through us.
No one knew the pronunciation because it was the name for God that was too holy to speak, so they literally did not say the name. Instead, they looked at the consonant letters with no vowels and said, Adonai.
יְהוָ֥ה
YHWH
Adonai – LORD
Adonai, meant something like Lord, or the High One. And yet the word lord does have a modern attachment that many of us presume, even subconsciously. Many Bible translation words are like this because words evolve in meaning and even the feeling of it, all the time, so quickly. So making them contextual to us is a better reading of the text, one could argue, than literal translations.
Lord conjures up certain things. But we know that God is not primarily like a high official of nobility appointed by King Charles in fancy robes like it’s graduation season. No. That is one imagination. A popular one. A traditional one.
OK now that we got that out of the way, let me read the rest, switching out LORD with God or my Love. I’ll also be using that for God’s pronouns to expand our imagination.
Psalm 103
Let my whole being[a] bless my Love!
Let everything inside me bless their holy name!
2 Let my whole being bless God
and never forget all their good deeds:
3 how God forgives all your sins,
heals all your sickness,
4 saves your life from the pit,
crowns you with faithful love and compassion,
5 and satisfies you with plenty of good things
so that your youth is made fresh like an eagle’s.
6 My Love works righteousness;
does justice for all who are oppressed.
7 God made their ways known to Moses;
made their deeds known to the Israelites.
8 My Love is compassionate and merciful,
very patient, and full of faithful love.
9 God won’t always play the judge;
They won’t be angry forever.
10 God doesn’t deal with us according to our sin
or repay us according to our wrongdoing,
11 because as high as heaven is above the earth,
that’s how large God’s faithful love is for those who honor them.
12 As far as east is from west—
that’s how far God has removed our sin from us.
13 Like a parent feels compassion for their children—
that’s how my Love feels compassion for those who honor them.
14 Because God knows how we’re made,
God remembers we’re just dust.
15 The days of a human life are like grass:
they bloom like a wildflower;
16 but when the wind blows through it, it’s gone;
even the ground where it stood doesn’t remember it.
17 But God’s faithful love is from forever ago to forever from now
for those who honor God.
And God’s righteousness reaches to the grandchildren
18 of those who keep their covenant
and remember to keep their commands.
19 my Love has established their throne in heaven,
and their kingdom rules over all.
20 You divine messengers,
bless My Love!
You who are mighty in power and keep their word,
who obey everything God says,
bless them!
21 All you heavenly forces,
bless My Love!
All you who serve them and do their will,
bless them!
22 All God’s creatures,
bless my Love!
Everywhere, throughout their kingdom,
let my whole being
bless my Love!
Someone who’s just starting out in the Christian faith asked me this week,
Pastor Lydia, how am I supposed to pray?
One of the homeworks I gave her was to come up with names for God that she feels comfortable with. Actually, not just a name, but a nickname. A pet name, like a pet name you come up with for your girlfriend that you just started dating.
Because this letter, this prayer, fits more to a loving endearing pet name for a God than Lord
I mean,
“crowns you with faithful love and compassion,
and satisfies you with plenty of good things”
I mean it’s not full on Song of Songs, but this is a love letter. This is a love prayer.
And you know what? This is a love devotion song that comes only AFTER you’ve gone through some really tough times together. Like, getting back together after a big break up.
I was visiting my aunt in New Jersey a few ago and her two adult kids all showed up to her house for a little family reunion while I was in town. My cousins lived in New York and they both drove at least an hour in traffic to get together. Turns out though, that they get together every weekend. This kind of surprised me. My parents and my siblings live about the same distance in Southern California, at least hour traffic drives they do not want to make unless it’s real gathering that only happens about 5-6 times a year. But my aunt’s family, they get together through this hour-long traffic drive every weekend. “Really Every weekend?” I asked. I asked my cousin, like why?
She said that there was this one time, some years ago, while they were all living together, the dad had moved out for a few months. They really thought the family was going to break up and that since then they’ve been even tighter and closer than ever.
I mean, this must be some kind of natural law of attraction. Why is it that the distance makes the heart grow fonder? How grateful you are that you can breathe through your nose after suffering through a cold.
This is the case for me and Jesus.
In the passage that was critical to my own calling back in love with Jesus, Luke 7 tells a story about a woman who loves Jesus so much that she poured oil on his feet and wiped it with her hair. The onlookers were confused about this but Jesus tells the story of two debtors saying,
Luke 7:41-42
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[c] and the other fifty.
42 Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
You only know that kind of love, that kind of gratitude for forgiveness and reconnection after the debt. This isn’t meant to be transactional but a hyperbole. It’s meant to describe the feeling, not the transaction with God, sometimes we get too caught up on the transaction language. But Jesus wasn’t saying that God is a generous loan shark, but trying to capture the gratitude of the debtor, and you won’t relate to the story unless you’ve had debt, that’s been forgiven.
Have you had a debt that’s been forgiven? Have you been in a desperate situation where you had to be indebted to someone?
I had an appointment in an office building a few months ago. And as I was looking at the office building directory, I saw a name I recognized. It said, Topper. Hi Topper. Are you here? Could you stand up for a second? So we can see who you are? I don’t know his full story, but I know he’s an elder black man, who’s produced and directed tv shows and documentaries. He’s the one who made that One Love art piece here. He’s done organizing and activism, literally part of the civil right movement. I love that you’re part of this community, so grateful for your presence here. So I see this Topper name cause it’s not a common name. After my appointment, I went to Topper’s door and knocked on it, cause I like the guy.
There he was, in his overalls, the office with two huge screens and a video editor editing something. He immediately invited me and said, I want you to check this out, and told his editor,
“play that one part for Pastor Lydia.”
The screen played a scene from a black church. Singers dressed as you do for Sunday Best, jumping on stage, beautiful heart wrenching voices singing Gospel about having joy and hope in Jesus. It’s much more expressive and emotional than my ‘ol presbyterian, what we call the frozen chosen, self is used to. Topper says,
“You see, this is what we need to share right now. The joy”
and he went to explain the singer and this Atlanta church’s impact on the movement.
I felt so disconnected to the joy that I saw on the screen in the moment to be honest. I’ve been so appalled by the political state I have been seeing in the US and violence around the world that I’ve just been feeling general dread. Joy? Jumping for joy and gratitude is not a natural response for surviving these times for me, although I have heard it is necessary. My disembodied intellectually woke self oscillates from crying to my therapist while talking about political theory and theology to watching liberal stand up comics reels to cope.
The Black church knows joy that I don’t know.
Yolanda Pierce wrote in a book titled “In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit”
“The Black church has been a place of refuge as the sons and daughters of enslaved persons and sharecroppers became priests and bishops and evangelists.
The Black church has been a physical sanctuary, with the congregation housing fugitive slaves and serving as stops on the Underground Railroad.
The Black church birthed and funded the largest and most effective grassroots political movement–the civil rights movement–which challenged Jim and Jane Crow, lynching, segregation, and voting restrictions. How can I say thanks?…
How can I say thanks for a theology not just rooted in eschatological hope but focused on becoming the beloved community on earth as it will be in heaven?”
Thank God for the Black Church in American Christianity. I loved telling my daughter on MLK day that MLK was a pastor, just her mommy!
Psalm 103 knows joy and praise that can only come from going through it all.
I read a pastor put it this way, Rachael McClair co–pastor of a church called Highlands Church in Denver, CO
Psalm 103 shouts its gratitude loudly, like the trumpets of a mariachi band. Its rejoicing comes only after the suffering.
On first glance, it could read like a return to the innocence of the first Psalms, those of orientation; of, perhaps, naiveté. But re-orientation is something much harder earned. This Psalm isn’t an attempt to go back in time to when life seemed so simple, before all the suffering. It is what joy sounds like on the other side of the suffering.
Rachael McClair, co-pastor Highlands Church in Denver
As we have been praying through the Psalms in this season leading up to Lent and Easter, we have soaked our spirits with the honesty and the rawness of the Psalmist prayers of outcries, of vengeance, of doubt of faith and questions like,
“What you are you doing God?”
We know the prayers have places of belief, unbelief, and we’re now getting to see this place of new orientation. A place of believing again, after disbelief.
And that place? That place isn’t just returning to orientation. It’s much more grand. It’s explosive. It’s beyond what you’ve ever known and even more.
as high as heaven is above the earth,
As far as east is from west—
And you realize just how small you are. The psalmist is utterly humbled and everything is honestly laughable, cause nothing matters. It’s like all that suffering, who cares?
we’re just dust.
The days of a human life are like grass:
they bloom like a wildflower
but when the wind blows through it, it’s gone;
even the ground where it stood doesn’t remember it.
In a sense, Who cares because GOD’s faithful love is from forever ago to forever from now. 3 generations from now, and ALL, God’s realm, God’s household cares for ALL, which is my translation of
“his kingdom rules over all.”
It ends with Bless My Greatest Love! With exclamation marks. Bless God! Blessings upon Blessings just shooting up into the sky like the ending finale of a fireworks, which is always more impressive than I expect.
This thing we’re going through as a nation, this grief that you’re carrying, this suffering that you have been enduring, is all part of the long and glorious story of love. God’s steadfast love. Not one who Lord over you to make sure you’re doing it right. But one who loves you, with compassion and forgiveness, and endless mercy.
This kind of prayer of new orientation only comes through the night and in the morning. I’m gonna attempt to channel Black Church mode, I do so much of my own theology through the works of Black theology, why not live, embody it, by singing preaching,
The Steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
Their mercies never come to an end
They are new every morning, new every morning,
Great is thy faithfulness oh Love,
Great is thy faithfulness.
Whether you are going through getting to know God initially, orientation, or falling out of love with God, disorientation, or coming back to taste the goodness of God again, new orientation– know that others like the Psalms and the Black church have been through the journey. Even if you don’t know it yet, maybe not now, but you will praise. You will praise God at the top of your lungs, maybe on a stage with a mid singing voice, saying, Great is thy faithfulness oh Love.
Would you pray with me?