What’s your hobby? I’ve been thinking a lot recently that our lives need to be integrated and that every part of them can be part of our life with God. Now, King David was a crossword enthusiast. When he wasn’t ruling or fighting or building a dynasty or on the run from his enemies, he was a crossword enthusiast. How do we know that? Well, there are 8 psalms we call alphabetical psalms. In these, the first verse begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and so on until the last verse with the twenty-first letter. And David wrote 5 of the 8. So he liked nothing better than to take on the discipline of composing poetry according to strict rules. And he brought that gift and discipline to the service of God. And he did it in a determined way.

That’s what comes across in the first few verses. I will praise you. I will praise your name. I will exalt you. I will extol you. Every day and for ever. And that’s a lot of praise. So many of us only praise God if we feel like it. But David decides to praise God. He gives us the example of a man deciding to praise God. And bringing discipline to it. And making even his hobby praise God. Some years ago, I translated a hymn from French to English for a book called ‘World Praise’. The first line I translated, ‘I mean to praise the Lord.’ But the editor changed it to ‘I long to praise the Lord’. And all the difference between historic christianity and the modern effete version of it is there in that change. God’s people have always decided to praise God whether they felt like it or not. They have been prepared to overcome difficulties to be in God’s house. They have been prepared to make sacrifices to be at God’s house: ‘I mean to praise the Lord!’ But now, we only praise the Lord when we feel like it. Or when it’s convenient: ‘I long to praise the Lord.’

But there are rewards for discipline. David is so keen on it that he ends this Psalm in that way too, repeating his decision to praise God and recommending the decision to others too, to you – verse 21! And he’s not the only one who’s found it a useful discipline to decide to praise God. And even to do it in writing. This week I was looking at Anne Townsend’s book ‘Faith without pretending’ about the way she refounded her faith on a more solid foundation her faith after a spiritual and psychological collapse. And one of the ways God spoke to her was when she decided to start the discipline of writing letters to God: ‘I couldn’t pray . . . but I had begun to type again. So . . . I started writing letters to God.’

In a similar way, the Lord draws David into an astonishingly rich meditation on his own character as he chews his pen, puzzling about how to turn a crossword into praise. And he knows he’s writing something permanent. He knows in verses 4 to 7 that he’s handing something on to posterity in the same way that Shakespeare did when he wrote, ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this’ and ‘my love shall in my verse ever live young.’ He knows that he is giving a song to the future.

How does he come to know this? Well, usually this happens when you come to realise how much you’re indebted to the past. Verses 8 and 9 shows that David is himself a recipient of a deposit from the past. A well-chosen quotation in a good setting is a great delight in a poem or a speech. And David is delighting the eyes and ears of his readers as they enjoy his crossword of praise. And then comes verse 8 and 9 and they clap with delight. Why? Because the newness and the virtuosity of language is anchored in something familiar - one of the pleasures of listening to a new album by Oasis is picking out the quotations from the Beatles in it.  Unfortunately, David’s quotation passes most of us by. We are like the spectator at a lazz concert who doesn’t understand why everyone applauds at a certain point in a solo which to us is an undifferentiated virtuoso display: ‘Oh, he quoted Charlie Parker!’ But David’s ‘ideal reader’ recognises an answer to prayer given by God to Moses. Moses had prayed that God would show him his glory – a worthwhile prayer! Many people have prayed, ‘God if you exist, show me that you are there.’ They have often been surprised but never disappointed. And Moses prayed something like that and received above all not a sight of God but an insight into his character. Tozer said: ‘Worship rises or falls in any church altogether depending upon the attitude we take toward God, whether we see God big or whether we see Him little. Most of us see God too small; our God is too little. David said, "O magnify the Lord with me," and "magnify" doesn't mean to make God big. You can't make God big. But you can see Him big.’ But you need to see him big correctly.

And God is big little! What do I mean? He is the God of the Exodus. He has compassion on people who have to make bricks without straw. He takes the side of those labouring under injustice. He makes a people out of no people. He leads them through a wilderness and brings them to a land.

And David embroiders that theme. He knows he’s writing for the future. Whether he knows he’s writing for a far future like ours is less certain but boy does he stretch out now in verses 10 to 13! And who’s to say that as he thinks about the God of the Exodus he doesn’t here begin to get a glimpse of the God of the second exodus and of the Church set free from spiritual slavery and established worldwide in Christ? Of great David’s greater Son and his kingdom?

And yet he in spite of his grandeur, he is still the same, familiar God. He is big little. His plans may be unfathomable but verses 14 to 16 show that  they are still on a human scale. Still identifiable. God is all powerful but we can still legitimately plan because he works dependably. God is all powerful but he still constitutes us stewards of his creation and we can responsibly plan. The physicists tell us that there many well be lots of other dimensions and strange things happening in them. Wormholes and string theory. And presumably, even though we couldn’t confidently operate in them, God is in control there too. But for the moment, even though God is way beyond us, he operates in familiar ways such that it’s sensible for me to talk about meeting God in the everyday occurences and activities of everyday life – including the crossword puzzle. 14 to 16 is reassuring – David could pick up his newspaper this week and once he’d made certain adjustments he could identify the people in the world today with whom God has sympathy. You’d have to bring him up to date with 3000 years of history but he’s say, ‘Oh I see there’s trouble in Africa. Famine is it? Thought so.’

And now the reason I was drawn to this psalm in the first place. Verses 18 and 19. I knew I was going to preach on prayer today in connection with ‘the Anatomy of the Healthy Church’ and I was drawn to this psalm by what Mel said last week in the Fathers’ Day service. He said that  a good dad you could speak about anything to and he likened God to that. And that lived with me and grew. I want to be able to speak about anything to God. And fortunately, he is big little.

David already knew that it was possible to talk to God about anything. This Psalm tells us that even though he is unfathomable, God operates in the same universe as I do. My kids find me unfathomable. Some of my enthusiasms and ways. But we’re in the same universe – we’ve shared many of the same formative experiences including our own exodus from France. And so, we can talk about things together and I welcome that. And so does God welcome the chance to talk about my world with me because it’s his world too. And about your world with you.

David already knew that God is well disposed towards us. Sometimes I’m pretty critical about my children; but I’m basically well-disposed towards them. So is God towards me. And towards you.

But you say, God doesn’t share my experiences! Well, I told you that even though he was writing for posterity, David perhaps didn’t see the big picture in much detail. From the exodus, he extrapolated and we see a worldwide thing going on in this psalm. A hint of ‘Great David’s greater Son and his kingdom. What he didn’t see was the detailed outworking of how God comes in the most intimate sense to understand where we’re coming from. God is good to talk to above all not because he moves in the same universe as I do and he’s well-disposed towards me. There is that but above all, God is good to talk to because in Christ he has shared the essence of my experiences as a human being. And basically he’s not looking at me thinking, ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ Basically, he looking at me and he’s near to all who call on him . . . he hears their cry and saves them. 

And all that, David has done as a crossword. An integration of life, work and hobby. What about your integration? ‘Let every creature praise his holy name for ever and ever.’