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Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.\xa0One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts.\xa0They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty\u2014and I will meditate on your wonderful works. They tell of the power of your awesome works\u2014and I will proclaim your great deeds. They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. (Psalm 145:3-8)

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This Psalm in Hebrew is an acrostic poem.\xa0 Each new line begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.\xa0 From Aleph to Taw, A to Zed.\xa0 Or if you prefer: from alpha to omega, from beginning to end.\xa0 There is a completeness to it.\xa0 As there is a completeness to the deeds of the Lord and to the generations that are called on to praise Him for it.\xa0\xa0

The very structure of this psalm reminds us that God\u2019s people have always told the stories of God.\xa0 They have always lifted up their voices in praise of God.\xa0 There will never be a time when they don\u2019t, because God and his work is always worth of it.\xa0 If somehow we miss a beat, the very stones will cry out.\xa0 We simply take up our place in that litany of praise and storytelling\u2014publicly professing our faith again and again in songs, creeds, and stories until we finish our race and take up our place in the great cloud of witnesses.\xa0 And even there: we\u2019ll continue praising our God.

Now, the words of our confession do change from time to time as God continues to intervene and act in history.\xa0 In the time of Israel, the best way to describe God was the way that God described Himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai: \u201cThe Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.\u201d

The words that we use now are different though.\xa0 Because we\u2019ve come to know God through Jesus Christ.\xa0 And so when we join the chorus of God\u2019s faithful people, we do so in words like those of the Apostles Creed\u2014declaring the saving action of God in Jesus Christ who came to live, die, and be raised again: who Ascended, who will come again to judge, and who in the meantime has poured out the Holy Spirit.

Our confession is even more particularly shaped in the language of the Reformation\u2014the Heidelberg Catechism\u2019s first question and answer being among our most favorite\u2014recognizing that our only comfort in life and in death comes from our belonging to Jesus Christ our Lord because of all His mighty deeds on our behalf.

As a church denomination we recognize how the mighty deeds of God bear on our contemporary lives and situations through Contemporary Testimonies like Our World Belongs to God and the Belhar Confession.

Even more particularly through the unique prayers we pray and stories we tell, we as individuals in the church continue to confess the ways that God has shown up and been faithful.\xa0 We tell out to one another the ways that God has brought healing, comforted us in times of grief or loneliness, saved us, forgiven us, empowered us to forgive someone else.\xa0

God\u2019s people are constantly doing this work of telling out the faith to one another because God remains faithfully present and active in new ways in our lives.\xa0 Through this simple act of witnessing in response to what God has done: the faith is passed on.\xa0

So, how will you join this litany of praise that passes on the faith?\xa0 What story of God\u2019s praise do you have to share?\xa0 How will you tell it out to the next generation?

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