“Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.”
– Psalm 106:1
Hi James and Ellen,
Do you tell made up stories? Do you tell real life stories? Your grandpaa has noticed a morphing in recent years of how something that is wanted to be conveyed by a guy or gal is now being done orally versus being done using paper and pencil. What your grandpaa has noticed has been a shift from haphazardly collecting perceived desired information from a guy or gal through asking random, arbitrary questions to be responded to in writing resulting in carefully parsed, selective answers to asking a guy or gal to extemporaneously and authentically tell his or her life story. When your grandmaa and grandpaa went through OC International’s four weeks of internship with over 25 other missionary interns in the summer of 1995, your grandmaa and grandpaa had to share their life stories in front of all the other interns. Instead of your grandpaa going first to tell his life story in front of all the other guys and gals who were going through OC International’s internship or your grandmaa going first to tell her life story in front of all the other guys and gals who were going through the OC International’s internship, your grandmaa and grandpaa took the option of being able to segue their life stories from the time when your grandmaa and grandpaa were born to what life had been like for your grandmaa and grandpaa as kids to what life had been like for your grandmaa and grandpaa as they got older, met and got married and what life had been like for your grandmaa and grandpaa as missionaries. As OC International continued to require their missionary interns to give their life stories during their annual summer internships, Steve Aldrich – who was the guy who was tasked by OC International to oversee their summer internships, began asking each OC International missionary intern to instead of just giving a list of more or less factual details of where he or she had been born to where he or she was hoping to live to begin to include in his or her life story some specific uptimes and explicit downtimes that have been instrumental in molding his or her life. Steve also began asking each OC International missionary intern during OC International’s annual summer internship to include in his or her life story three heroes who have had a positive influence in his or her life and three villains who have had a negative influence in his or her life.
Storying is now a buzz word in missions’ circles. Because most guys, gals and kids who are living in emerging and underdeveloped countries learn through oral stories, going chronologically through the Bible in story form was popularized in the ‘70’s by Trevor McIlwain – a Philippians assigned New Tribes field team missionary. When your grandpaa was in Paraguay for about a week in 1989 and during the time that he was with Dave and Joed Hill – who are missionaries with New Tribes in Paraguay, your grandpaa first heard about this growing trend towards reading or studying through the Bible in a chronological way.
No one knows who scribed Psalm 106. David and Isaiah are mentioned by Bible scholars as possibilities as to who might have scribed this psalm of thankfulness to God for His mercy. Sometime during the years when God’s specially chosen guys and gals – the Israelite people group guys and gals, had judges stepping up to take on a leader role in the land area that God gave to specially chosen guys and gals to always to have live in as their very own land if . . . or during the years when God’s specially chosen guys and gals – the guys and gals who had been living in the land of Judah, where living as exiles in the land of Babylonia may have been another time that Bible scholars think that maybe this psalm of thankfulness to God for His mercy was written. This psalm author overviews experiences that the Israelite people group guys and gals had – such as from the years that they lived under Egyptian Pharaohs to passing through the Red Sea on dry ground while the Egyptian Pharaoh and his army drowned when the Red Sea waters flowed back together again to their desert travels – highlighting the fate of Dathan when the earth opened up and swallowed him for his act of rebellion, Moses standing in the breach after his bro Aaron molded a calf out of molten gold for the Israelite people group guys and gals to worship, the rebellion of the Israelite people group guys and gals against God resulting in God sending a plague that began killing His specially chosen guys and gals before Phinehas stood up and intervened, when the Israelite people group guys and gals began grumbling about not having water resulting in Moses getting in trouble with God for hitting the rock that God had water come out of and to God’s reaction when His specially chosen guys and gals began mingling with non-Israelite or Gentile people group guys and gals. This psalm’s author begins his psalm in verse 1 with “Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.” If your grandpaa wrote psalm ‘storying’, he would begin with the two years when he, your grandmaa, dad and Aunt Lynn attended the Christian & Missionary Alliance Church in Aberdeen, South Dakota – then the three years when he, your grandmaa, dad and Aunt Lynn lived in Chicago while he was a student at Moody Bible Institute – then the year that he, your grandmaa, dad and Aunt Lynn lived in Texas where your grandmaa and grandpaa tried to learn Spanish at Rio Grande Bible Institute in Edinburg – then the . . .
Psalm 106 (970)