The Heart's Cry: Psalm 48

Psalm 48

Time for a little history lesson to get to a deeper point.

There was a man named Abram whom God told to go, and he went.
This man became Abraham and God promised him offspring.
Abraham begat Isaac after quite some time and a bit of laughter.
Isaac followed the Lord and begat Esau and Jacob.
Jacob grew up and tricked Isaac, but that's not really a part of this story.
Esau was cheated out of a birthright but begat, among others, Korah.
Korah begat others whom became the Korahites, who sang and wrote songs, particularly Psalms 42, 44 - 49, 84, 85, 87, and 88.
In some English translations Korah is spelled Core, so these Sons of Korah, who sing and write songs, could also be considered Sons of the Core.

All of that leads me to think that maybe most English translations really get the spelling wrong. What if these Sons of the Core are trying to get across something deeper in their Psalms? What if they want us to understand that praise should be something that exists at the core of each one of us, not at the periphery, or worse? If worship should be so intrinsically a part of us we probably all need to work on that aspect of our faiths.

Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights, has a character Abuelita Claudia in In the Heights who [spoiler alert] passes away and Lin's character Usnavi says the following about her, "Abuela Claudia had simple pleasures. She sang the praises of things we ignore. Glass Coke bottles, bread crumbs, a sky full of stars. She cherished these things, she’d say; Alabanza. Alabanza means to raise this thing to God’s face And to sing, quite literally, praise to this." I wonder if we need to be more like Abuelita Claudia in how we look at the world around us, praising God for all the small wonders of this life, that seems to me like what worship at the core could look like.

+ What role does worship play in your life? How could it become a core aspect of you?

+ What might it look like for you to praise God for "glass coke bottles, bread crumbs, a sky full of stars"?