Psalm 147:5: Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.

I don’t know if you know what a string figure is or a hard knot. I learned how to do string figures from my mom, who was pretty much in favor of inexpensive and indestructible things for my brother and me to play with. String is long-lasting at least, although I found ways to destroy it, as I did with many things that were more expensive.

I would be trying to make “Jacob’s Ladder” (my favorite) and have a hopeless tangle of string after about the third step. I would take it to my mom, who could untangle the mess and hand it back to me, knowing I could be back in half an hour with a worse tangle. She was very patient about this (she told me she enjoyed taking knots out of things), and she got to be very good at untangling knotted strings, even the dreaded “hard knot.” I heard about hard knots so often that you would think I would know what one was. But I didn’t . I had to look it up, and found out that a hard knot is one that can’t be undone with one hand.

Oh. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get my hard knots undone and had to take them to my mom. Mystery explained.

It seems to me that God gives us our lives, and while matters should be as pure and simple as a length of new string, we try to make complicated figures with what we have been given and end up with a knotted, tangled mess. By ourselves, we cannot fix this situation. We find, however, if we call on God, God will take what we have done and untangle it, hard knots and all. We are able to do this only through the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has undone the hard knots of sin and death.

Praise be to God for fresh new string and for God’s power which untangles it when we have it all in a snarl. Amen.

Isaiah 11:6: The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.

I don’t know if you were here for the closing program for this year’s Summer Music Camp, but I hope you were. The children sang, played hand chimes, manipulated puppets, and performed a musical that they had put together in just five days. It was an impressive display on all accounts, and several people said it was the best camp we’ve ever had , and I would agree.
The parents of some of the campers had come to the camp themselves, and that was a reminder of the excellence of the program and the dedication of those who worked with them. The campers learned about working together, about being in front of an audience and about achieving something they could be proud of.
I thought, as I watched the campers doing their final program, that these are the children who will take over from my generation.They experienced the love of God and the importance of treating each other well during the week. In the final analysis, though, it’s not just about the songs or the puppets or chimes or the music, although those are important. It’s also about carrying on a long tradition that will benefit the next generation and encourage them to share the Gospel in their turn. Some might say that they’re only children, but Jesus said that it is the children who set the example for us. The road that he traveled will lead us all through this life and into the next. Praise God for creative works, for being together and working toward a goal, and for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord, who has redeemed us and leads us on to eternal life.

Matthew 5:37: “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”

I don’t know if you’ve heard what Mark Twain said about lies and statistics, but it’s something I can’t repeat in its totality here, so if you don’t know, ask a bass. They’ll tell you.

Anyhow, I was thinking about statistics since, as you know, I love baseball although sometimes it seems the game is more about statistics than anything else. I think we are all familiar with measures such as batting average, runs batted in, or earned runs, and know that these figures are all measures of how well a player is doing. But did you know that in all, there are about 130 statistics that are kept in baseball, many of which most fans have never heard of? For example, there is the EQA or the equivalent average, which measures a player’s batting average not counting park and league factors, whatever those might be. Then there’s the FPOM or the first pitch outs made, which counts the number of outs earned when the batter ground or flies out on the first pitch. And finally, there’s the VORP, the value over replacement player, which calculates a player’s overall value in comparison to a “replacement-level” player.

Other sports have their statistics as well, but I was thinking that we also have them in choir. If you figure that we give two and a half hours a week for say 50 weeks a year (including special services and rehearsals), higher math tells us that is 125 hours a year. If you’ve been in choir for, say, 50 years (I’m not naming any names here), that works out to 7600 hours total, or about 950 work days, or around six months. Now of course, the time that professional athletes put in is for their job. It is not our “job” to sing or rehearse. We do it out of a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving to God, who created us, who created music, and who fit us for fellowship, growth and praise. And it was God who saved us from our sins through the death of Jesus Christ, our Savior. And that single sacrifice is the most important statistic of all. Amen.