Thanksgiving Sharing Idea 2: A Creative Liturgy Based in Psalm 124

As I said last week, Thanksgiving is a holiday that is begging for more to be drawn out of it. We have looked already at one possible way to draw more out of the traditional standby, “Let’s go around the table and have everyone say something they’re thankful for.” This week, we’re going to look at a very different way to do the same thing, this time using a psalm as a springboard.

Psalms 124 offers us simple and dramatic language for expressing our thankfulness to God for His work of deliverance in our lives. The metaphors are vivid, but the language is general enough to allow for broad application. One of the things I like about using it is that rather than simply stating what we are thankful for, the psalm invites us to take a second look and reframe those things in terms of God’s gracious hand intervening in our lives. This psalm is focused primarily on experiences of deliverance, so it may not be the best fit for all the things we may be thankful for in a given year, but surely we all have experiences that do fit with it that we can use the psalm to praise Him for.

In order to adapt the psalm for personal sharing as part of a traditional Thanksgiving celebration, I have prepared a creative liturgy based on the language of Psalm 124 but recast so as to allow participants to link the metaphors to their own experiences. I call it a “creative” liturgy because it is more of a liturgy template, requiring each participant to creatively fill in a piece of it. The leader opens the time of celebration and invites each person to testify about some particular way in which God delivered them from a crisis in the past year. Three partial examples have been prepared based on the imagery of Psalm 124. The first (Celebrant 1) is based on verses 3 and 6, the second (Celebrant 2) is based on verses 4-5, and the third (Celebrant 3) is based on verse 7. Participants can use one of these, modify one to better suit their situation, or compose a new one following the same pattern (Celebrant n). In any case, they will each by creating 3-5 lines of the liturgy.

In order to do this, participants will need a bit of notice and time to think. You could distribute it and give everyone 5 minutes to compose their lines, you could give it to people as they arrive and let them know when the liturgy will be used so they can look for an opportunity to get ready by then, or you could send it out beforehand so that people come with it already prepared. Which of these is best will probably depend on your group. For families with young children, for instance, it might be easier for parents to help the children prepare something beforehand when there are fewer distractions.

I have included the liturgy below, but for actual use you may want to use this printable .pdf version.