1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402 USA
On the campus of Calvin University
© 2025 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
Merciful God,
We need you so much. When we look around, we see disease everywhere; when we look within, we see our sin. You desire truth in our inward being, and in this season of Lent, we take an honest look at the smudges on our souls.
Wash us, we pray, and we will be whiter than snow. But as the winter snow melts from the landscape around us, we see the mess lying beneath it: the scrubby grass; the bits of litter; the withered, unraked leaves. Our hearts and souls collect their clutter, too: little grudges, occasional envy, a bad habit or two that we’ve always meant to clean up.
Create clean hearts in us, God. Renew rights spirits within us. Open our windows and spring clean our souls. Scour them with your grace, and blow the fresh, brisk wind of your Spirit through them. Restore to us the joy of your salvation.
We need you so much.
And we need each other, too. We’re grateful for opportunities like this, to gather together to sing and pray, in communion with other Christians. As the coronavirus drives more and more people away from each other, we’re reminded that we were made by you for community.
Be close to all of those whom this disease has pushed apart. Be close to those who feel too far from home. Guide Calvin University—faculty, students, and staff—as we try to figure out how to do our work and live our lives under disorienting new circumstances.
The stress of these changes doesn’t replace our ordinary burdens—the readings, the lab work, the papers, the midterms… and the fatigue all those things cause. The new challenges pile on top of all those things. God, give us patience and stamina.
And be especially close to those afflicted with the coronavirus. Do not cast them away from your presence. Give them strength and healing. Give them comfort.
Our world belongs to you. Our air belongs to you. The ears we use to hear, the mouths we use to sing, the minds we use to think and feel and pray—all yours. In your great mercy, contain this virus sweeping your good world. Spring clean that world.
And while we’re gathered here, we use the breath that you have given us to pray together the prayer that you have taught us:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.For yours is the kingdom,
the power,
and the glory forever.AMEN.
Watch the chapel service video.
Why and how did psalm singing become such a hallmark of Reformed worship? Join Dr. Karin Maag for a fascinating journey through time, from Reformation Geneva to Scotland and from the Netherlands to New England, exploring the roots and impact of metrical psalm singing. Along the way, we will hear the voices of early modern Christians as they learned how to sing the psalms, both in unison and in harmony.
Vinroy D. Brown Jr.—conductor, musicologist, educator, and minister of creative worship and music at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City—explores the vibrant intersection of Black sacred music and the psalms. He talks about Black composers and how they have reimagined the psalms through choral music, spirituals, and the gospel tradition for the benefit of everyone.
John Goldingay, an Anglican priest and the senior professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, posits the psalms are the densest material in the entire Old Testament. They expound the nature of God as the compassionate, faithful, and committed one, but also as the one who makes demands upon us. The psalms help us talk to God, even about difficult things—and when we do, we are talking to someone who is in a position to do something about it.
Why and how did psalm singing become such a hallmark of Reformed worship? Join Dr. Karin Maag for a fascinating journey through time, from Reformation Geneva to Scotland and from the Netherlands to New England, exploring the roots and impact of metrical psalm singing. Along the way, we will hear the voices of early modern Christians as they learned how to sing the psalms, both in unison and in harmony.
Vinroy D. Brown Jr.—conductor, musicologist, educator, and minister of creative worship and music at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City—explores the vibrant intersection of Black sacred music and the psalms. He talks about Black composers and how they have reimagined the psalms through choral music, spirituals, and the gospel tradition for the benefit of everyone.
John Goldingay, an Anglican priest and the senior professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, posits the psalms are the densest material in the entire Old Testament. They expound the nature of God as the compassionate, faithful, and committed one, but also as the one who makes demands upon us. The psalms help us talk to God, even about difficult things—and when we do, we are talking to someone who is in a position to do something about it.
Sister Kathleen Harmon of the community of the Ohio province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Dayton, invites us to be transformed by the psalms and experience them as the whole story God is revealing to us. As we keep praying and singing them, the psalms interpret us, and that’s when the transformation comes.
