Daily Devotion

When Pastor Heidi asked each staff member to take a turn writing a week of Daily Devotions, I decided to use the book of Psalms for this week.  I have loved reading the Psalms because in them I hear other people of God expressing their faith in very honest ways.  If you would read the psalms straight through you would see a psalm of great lament and pain right before a psalm of great praise and thanksgiving to God over and over again.  It seems the 150 Psalms give voice to all the different moods we might feel as we journey through life.  So in the next five days and in our daily devotions you will read my reflection on how particular Psalms have impacted my life and faith in unexpected ways.  I hope you will also feel free to share Psalms which have touched your life by bringing you solace, hope or just the words you needed to express the deep feelings which were in your heart.

Psalm 100

Psalm 100 was one of the first Psalms I memorized beside Psalm 23.  I remember memorizing it because my 4^th grade teacher gave it to us as an assignment.  I am not really sure why she assigned it, but perhaps it was because she knew that sometimes, we have this need to praise God for what God is doing and what God has done.  The words of the Psalm give witness to God’s love and grace through the call to praise God and naming the reasons to praise.  It is like in the Examen of Conscience, when you take time to reflect at the end of day, where you were aware of God’s presence in your life.  For me this awareness can lead me to lifting of prayers of praise and gratitude. 

However, my favorite verse from this Psalm is verse 2, Know that the Lord is God.  It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.   These words are echoed again by Jesus in John 10.   So for me, to know God is to go beyond mere knowledge of God with my mind.   To know God is to internalize God’s love and ways into my whole being and follow those ways in all aspect of my life.  To know God is to trust that I am loved deeply by God and empowered by that love and by God’s spirit, to love others.  That is a lofty goal for a sheep from God’s pasture, isn’t it?

However, in this most unusual year of 2020, knowing God might be exactly what the world needs from the church, as together we face the Covid-19 pandemic, address the racism we see in our nation and care for the world God created and in which we live. 

So I am wondering, if there is a psalm you have memorized?  If so, why?  And what does it mean to you to know God?

Picture taken in Glacier National Park, Essex Trail.  The stream making a joyful noise to God!

1 comments on article "Daily Devotion"

Marge Anderson

Sometimes I take a familiar psalm like this and rewrite it in opposite-gendered language. "Make a joyful noise to Yahweh, all the earth. Worship Yahweh with gladness, come into her presence with singing." Then I pray the psalm and see what hearing it this way does to me. Is my faith big enough to wrap around a God that is not only the "big man in the sky" image I was taught? I am just a sheep (no longer a lamb : )) trying to understand that God is so much bigger than I can appreciate..

6/29/2020 12:02 PM

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