A New Thing

Wednesday of Holy Week

April 5, 2023

Scripture Reading: Psalm 36:5-11
Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
   your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
   your judgments are like the great deep;
   you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
   All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
   and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
   in your light we see light.

O continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
   and your salvation to the upright of heart!
Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me,
   or the hand of the wicked drive me away.

The steadfast love of God is my mainstay, and perseverance does pay.  I tire of all the disinformation that surrounds us today. The hand of the wicked is truly trying to drive us from our mission of building the beloved community. The dark ads during the recent political campaigns were sickening, and the rhetoric that has followed in the political sphere is just as bad. The last line of this Psalm today hit home. It is hard to discern when walking away is the best way. How long do we, preserver?

Perhaps we need to rethink and reshape our perseverance. We need to give heed to Isaiah 43:18-19

Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.

Perhaps our prayers need to ask for eyes to see and ears to hear what that new thing is. Surely if Isaiah says it, the focus is on the One whom he saw was coming that we recognize as Jesus Christ. His prime directive was to Love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Perhaps we need to focus for a time on whether we do love ourselves. In God’s opinion, what does it mean to love oneself? Surely it partially means fulfilling the capacities with which we were created, becoming fully the persons God created us to be. My guess is that all of us have experienced something in life that has caused us to back away from such a fullness of being. I loved to sing as a child.  While rehearsing a song for a school program, all the girls in the class were practicing. My teacher stopped us and said, “Marilynn, don’t sing; just mouth the words.” My public singing ended right then. As an adult, the choir director at my church invited me to join the choir. I said I could not sing, and he said yes, you can try it. I did and enjoyed it.  When I told him that story. He told me that I probably had a more mature voice than the other girls at that age, and I was drowning them out. I wonder what would have happened if my teacher had said Marilynn see if you can sing as softly as the other or sing softly enough that you can hear the person standing next to you. There is a lesson here in learning to love oneself and avoiding behaviors that kill people’s souls, perhaps because we do not have enough faith in ourselves, or love of self to care about others.

Prayer: Lord, we open our hearts to doing a new thing in you and ask that you heal any damages in our beings that keep us from loving others as we love ourselves. 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.