Bless the Lord, oh my soul

Yesterday I was reading from one of Alistair Cooke's "Letters from America.”  Cooke was a Brit who lived a lot of his life in the USA, a lot in New York and was a talented journalist. He died in 2004 and his publisher, Penguin, released a new edition of the "Letters" in commemoration of his death. As a teenager I listened to the BBC broadcasts which Cooke continued to present until shortly before his death and they were fun stories of everyday life in the USA and odd, pithy things that everyone else looked over while Cooke noticed. 

One of his first accounts in the "Letters" begins with a story of a British diplomat friend who visited Cooke in the US. Cooke details that he is an expert on a peculiar type of goldfish, the goldfish in this case, being the American people (bear in mind that this was written in 1946 so when he refers to America, he is referring to the United States of the late 40s). When all there is are goldfish, it’s really hard to say what distinguishes the goldfish from other fish because the thing about goldfish is that no on

I have, for the past 2 months been a mackerel. However it has not taken long for me to be assimilated into the world of the goldfish. I am reminded of the “lobster in the pot” analogy. There were several things that I noticed when I first landed into the United Kingdom over 2 months ago and now I am forgetting those things at which I was first amazed. Everyone is grumpy; no one smiles, no one raises their head in greeting as they pass by their fellow human… we live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world and perhaps we have taken that for granted too.

So listening to the words from the opening song of the Midwinter conference from Chicago, I am reminded it’s not about me. It’s about LIFE. It’s about the ONE who give us life and the words of this song reverberate through my head.  We have been singing it at church here in Edinburgh… I love that… no matter where I am, I can be singing the praises of the Lord. These lyrics are great.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, oh my soul,

Worship his holy name.

Sing like never before, oh my soul…

I worship your holy name.