1 Sing to the Lord, all the world!
2 Worship the Lord with joy;
come before him with happy songs!
3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God.
He made us, and we belong to him;
we are his people, we are his flock.
4 Enter the Temple gates with thanksgiving;
go into its courts with praise.
Give thanks to him and praise him.
5 The Lord is good;
his love is eternal
and his faithfulness lasts forever. (Psalm 100)
This is one of the Psalms of praise and thanksgiving in the congregation of the Israelites. The gates and the doors are the gates and doors of the Jerusalem temple. The Psalm rings with echoes of joyful songs, full of praise and thanksgiving. Such joy is based, firstly, on their faith that they were God’s people, His creatures. They belonged to him. Secondly, it is based on the faithfulness of God through all generations, and He is good.
As we read this Psalm, we too enter into the joy of God’s people. We have the confidence of belonging to the God who created us. His faithfulness will never fail. We know this from our experience in the past. We know the goodness of the Lord as we live our lives this moment in the present. But what about the future?
While receiving training for my job, I learned that there is such a thing as “anticipatory grief” - a feeling that one would have if he/she is about to lose something significant before the event actually happens. Examples are when one is likely to lose one’s job during a company restructuring, facing an illness that likely leads to death. This feeling could also overwhelm other members of the family. Going through anticipatory grief honestly and openly often helps those involved to be able to handle the event more calmly when it happens, no matter how deep and how long the grieving might actually take.
In the same way, we have anticipatory thanksgiving here. The praise and thanksgiving in Psalm 100 are not specified, leaving it open to all generations after them to fill in the blanks and give thanks for the goodness they have received from God. We think of thanksgiving and praise are for something we have experienced or are enjoying now.
But we could very well praise God and thank Him in anticipatory thanksgiving too, because our future is secure in His hands, because we belong to Him and because of His faithfulness. He is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
We can say that we live our whole life in praise, worship and thanksgiving. We cannot but be jubilant, sing joyfully and shout for joy, in the congregation of His people, we need more enthusiasm, exuberance, expressiveness in our worship, because our God is a great God, and He has made us and cared for us wonderfully.