Living in the Spirit

Living in the Spirit

May 26, 2021

Scripture Reading: Psalm 29

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
   the God of glory thunders,
   the Lord, over mighty waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
   the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
   the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
   and Sirion like a young wild ox.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
   the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. –Psalm 29:3-8

How do we visualize God in our minds? Do we personify God, seeing the image of a human perhaps sitting on a throne? Do we perceive God’s presence with no visual identity? Is God’s image in your mind’s eye that of a loving father or an angry ruler or both or something else? Read through the quote from Psalm 29 above and consider how the Psalmist identified the voice of God. Most of us live in areas that are threatened at some time each year with floods, tornados, hurricanes, fires, or volcanos. These forces are fully capable of destroying everything around them. Yesterday, I saw pictures of the damage hurricanes did during the last year in Honduras. The homes were splintered wood on the ground peppered here and there with a bedframe or broken table. Worse yet, their crops were ruined—their source of livelihood gone in a split second. The story was about a young man trekking to North American in search of work to feed his family. He was turned back at the Mexican border.

I do not think the Psalmist writes to scare us. The poem highlights that God is more powerful than all the frightening experiences of life. We most often forget that truth when our lives are going well, and we begin to focus our attention on what Paul would call the flesh or the enticements of the world. That results in our getting rusty in our relationship with God–that is no place to be.

During 2020, we were thrown into multiple experiences of turmoil. We are now trying to deal with the challenges of pandemics and societal realities like racism and poverty we do not want to admit exists. Before we can refocus our priorities on the ways of God, we have a lot of rust we need to remove. The wonderful thing about an all-powerful God is God is stronger than any rust we may have developed that separates us from God. Getting rid of it may be painful as we have grown rather attached to it. God promises that God’s love can make all things new, if we follow God’s wisdom.

Prayer: Lord, remove the rust from our faith and bring us to wholeness in your love. 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 America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.