SPRING FORTH NOW 20026

March 15

Hallelujah!  You who serve God, praise God!  Just to speak his name is praise!  Just to remember God is a blessing—now and tomorrow and always.  From east to west, from dawn to dusk, keep lifting all your praises to God!  God is higher than anything and anyone, outshining everything you can see in the skies.  Who can compare with God, our God, so majestically enthroned, surveying his magnificent heavens and earth?  He picks up the poor from out of the dirt, rescues the forgotten who’ve been thrown out with the trash, seats them among the honored guests, a place of honor among the brightest and best.  He gives childless couples a family, gives them joy as the parents of children.  Hallelujah!

Psalm 113 (MSG)

Community, lift your eyes for a moment and look higher than the headlines. Psalm 113 in The Message celebrates a God who is High And Lifted Up, yet still bends low enough to raise people from the dust and seat them in places of dignity. That tension is the doorway to Transcendence. The same God who reigns above the nations also rewrites the story of those the world tried to overlook. For Black people whose resilience has carried generations through valleys and victories, this psalm reminds us that elevation is not accidental—it is divine attention at work. God specializes in turning overlooked places into launching pads for purpose. Praise becomes power when a community remembers that the One above everything is also deeply invested in our rising.