In doing so, I am fully aware that I am only entering in on a historic practice, followed by God’s people in every age. My hope is simply to learn myself from the discipline how to better enter into God’s sovereign presence and be filled with his Spirit.
Week of August 2 (Ninth after Pentecost) - Psalm 51:1-12
Summertime and Pentecost have me wondering, Lord. How do some relaxation from schedule and routine relate to the workings of your Spirit in our lives? Do they? It does seem that getting away helps us see both ourselves and you in better perspective.
Did King David's encounter with the prophet Nathan cause him, in later moments away, to write this psalm? Surely he was stung by the prophet's message to him. It was a real moment of truth. And out of it came the awareness that what he had done in secret was not hidden from you.
Much as I may delude myself momentarily in that regard, it can never be for long. For I know, too, that you know fully and in detail what I may succeed in hiding from others. My life, like King David's, is an open book on your hand, revealing not only my sinful acts but the intentions behind them as well.
Forgive me, O God, for all my misdeeds, and purify my intentions. Create in me a clean heart, and put a new and right spirit within me. For I know that only then can I truly teach transgressors your ways and see other sinners converted to you. Amen.
Week of August 9 (Tenth after Pentecost) - Psalm 130
Experiencing you as you are, Lord, in great power and glory, is never easy. Just as in your presence the prophet Isaiah cried out "Woe is me, for I am a sinful man and I dwell among a people of unclean lips," so must the psalmist have anguished over his sinful nature as well as his people's.
Clearly you have to judge us to save us, sinful as we all are. But thank you that "there is forgiveness with you" and we may thus be renewed. And thank you, too, that in waiting for you and on you earnestly we can be empowered by your steadfast love and grace.
Help us this week, Lord, also to know that we are not alone in this world, and that the redemption we seek, far more than personal alone, is communal. You have redeemed us, are still redeeming us, and will one day redeem us as individuals. But not only us. You will redeem Israel and the new Israel, your Church, i.e. your people in every age, from all their iniquities. Hallelujah! Amen.
Week of August 16 (Eleventh after Pentecost) - Psalm 111
What words can ever be worthy to offer my thanks, God, with the psalmist, for all the occasions on which you have heard my voice and my supplications. That with all you have to do in superintending the universe you have both time and the openness to listen to me whenever I call to you, is overwhelming.
I cannot even count the occasions when you have delivered me. Nor can I even recall in each case from what. Yet I know that you have done it throughout my pilgrimage and, indeed, are doing it still whenever I call on you.
What shall I, like the psalmist, return to you for all your bounty to me? With him I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on your name. I will also pay my vows to you in the presence of all your people. And I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice in the courts of your house.
Praise be to you, listening God, both now and forever! Amen.
Week of August 23 (Twelfth after Pentecost) - Psalm 84
Memories flood in on me as I read this psalm, Lord. Sacred memories of meeting you with your people in your house. Ever since childhood, when I first beheld the beauty of your dwelling place in the Austin community of Chicago, I have both seen and experienced it in every other place as well: North Park, Bethany, and Beverly, also in Chicago. Middletown, Connecticut on internship. Rockerfeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, in Paxton, Illinois, Hilmar, California, North Park again, and Winnetak, Illinois, as well as all the other places either visited or served before and since.
Everywhere you are even sparrows find a home and swallows build their nests where they may lay their young at your altars. Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. And happy are all whose strength is in you, in whose heart are all the highways to Zion.
Circumstances may change, as they have and do in life, but you remain the same. And wherever your house is and yet will be for me, I would rather be doorkeeper in it that dwell in the tents of wickedness. O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you! Amen.
Week of August 30 (Thirteenth after Pentecost) - Psalm 45
Love songs like this, Lord, are far more than tributes to an earthly kind, much as they may seem so on first reading. They are realy tributes to you, for you alone have invested kings with the right to rule and the wisdom and power to do it. I am reminded just now of so many who have borne rule in the church for me, some before I was born and others ever since, leaders called by your people and vested with your Spirit. Naming them in silence, I bless you for every one. Knowing that they, like me, have held and still hold the trasure of your good news in clay pots, I admire them all the more--for in their humanity, warts and all, they served and glorified you. Every one of them has had a share in who I am and I count them blessed.
And now, in the place of ancestors and alongside those leading as I write, as the psalmist says, you are providing sons--a whole new generation, rooted in the lineage of faith who will emerge in your good time to cause your name to be celebrated in generations yet unborn that "people may praise you forever and ever.
So does your song go on. Thank you for sweeping me up within it and allowing me to share in sending it on. Amen.
