It took a year to read the Bible, then almost 9 months to read the Apocrypha. Now, I'm going to try to offer reflections on the Narrative Lectionary. But, I won't be posting daily--at least, for a while.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

O Come, Let Us Sing to the Lord, a Reflection on Psalm 95

Psalm 95 is the traditional call-to-worship psalm.
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

After the call (and even within it--see "rock of our salvation"), the psalm lists reasons for our worship:
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King avove all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.

Summing up so far, we are called to praise God and to do so audibly, and we are reminded that God has already done a lot for us.

Thus, an appropriate response to the gifts we have already received is gratitude:
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!

When we see Psalm 95 in a prayer book, we may see only this much of it. But, the remaining verses of the psalm do relate to this week's reading from Exodus:
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty ears I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways." Therefore in my anger I swore, "They shall not enter my rest."

Rebellion, distrust, and doubt did not end in the wilderness. The admonition is this psalm helps us to remember that when we don't trust God, and so turn to our own ways and wills, things don't turn out very well for us. So, let's go back to the beginning of the psalm and sing the words and live them out.

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