The great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann begins his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament by making the simple, yet stunningly profound claim: that Israel’s faith does not begin with metaphysical claims about the deity they worship, but rather it begins with a remembrance of how that God was “for them”, in concrete situations of need, for their good; and that accordingly, any Old Testament theology that claims a rootedness in the Scriptural text ought to begin with one simple Hebrew word:
Todah.
‘Todah’ means ‘thanksgiving.’ Israel gives thanks for what God does for them. Their knowledge of God grows from there. And so should ours. As the Book of Common Prayer says, “It is right to give him thanks and praise.”
To that end, I have some things I want to publicly “todah” today… thank you for your kindness to us Lord Jesus!
- For helping us find a house that is MORE MORE MORE than we hoped or expected
- For blessing us with a realtor that treated us like royalty and made the whole process an absolute joy
- For giving us favor with the seller, to the extent that we got the house at the price we wanted, got a lot of our closing costs covered, and were able to get every “fix” done on the house by the seller without any trouble
- For helping us secure financing on this house despite the fact that we aren’t exactly “low risk”, pastoring, as we are, a fledgling community of faith
- For helping us secure money for our end of the closing costs
- For surprising us the morning of closing with the news that our end of closing would actually cost us $1200 LESS than originally estimated
- For blessing us with good friends at this wonderful church who helped us to move bunches of our things yesterday…THANK YOU HOUSE CHURCH!
- For causing the phone to ring off the hook yesterday with potential renters for the property we’re in right now
- And for the ridiculous favor and love he’s showing to the Bloom community by causing support to come in, in surprising ways, from friends near and far who wish to lend their “yes” to what God’s doing in our midst
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” Amen and amen!
הודו אל יהוה thanks be to God!
Thanks indeed!