Lent
February 24, 2016
Scripture Reading: Psalm 63:1-8
O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands and call on your name. –Psalm 63:1-4
This is my Psalm. I don’t really remember when I stumbled onto it at a time when it was exactly what I needed. Funny, I am sure it was a desperate time for me, but the desperation of the event has slipped into the annuals of not so significant. Yet, I have been blest by this Psalm ever since. I memorized it in the NIV version and thus it is awkward for me to read it aloud in any other version like this NRSV. I keep wanted to insert other words. I am also apt to do that with the verses I learned as a child from the King James. I still prefer the King James 23rd Psalm and John 3:16 flows readily from by tongue in its seventeenth century words.
While translation versions change, God does not change standing always ready to feed our thirsting souls. I, however, have changed in my willingness to seek God, now to trust without verification more often than not for I have beheld God’s glory. I saw it in the joy of the homeless woman testifying that she had found a home, a place to live; I have seen it in the trusting eyes of the children at my own church as they experience God; I hear it most often in music which speaks a language words cannot express; and I know it in the silence of deep meditation. Do you have a Psalm?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for the gifts of the Psalmists whose words have stretched through the eons to open our hearts and minds to your love. Help us to be psalmists for others transferring to each person whose lives we touch the joy of your salvation. Amen.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.