Psalm 36:5-11 (NRSVUE)
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.
Devotion
A very long time ago, I asked a pastor how she chose which lectionary passage to preach on. She lit up like the sun and said, “Oh, I pick the one I think is hardest.” She was confident not in her skills of preaching or scholarship but in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. While the choices for this Lenten Devotional all seemed hard, this bit of Psalm 36 seems quite a challenge. Then, surprise, for a class I am auditing this semester, about Genesis, there was this, “….YHWH stands alone as unrivaled and unopposed creator and king in the cosmos, which is also his temple” (Cho, P.K., Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, 2019, CUP). The “roof” of the world was the dome, called sky, above which was Heaven. The end of the world was under the ocean, “the great deep.” Our God controls the ocean, yet the world needs water, so we have rivers (and rain). Our God created all life in the ocean, the sky, the land – God is filled with steadfast love for all creation! Steadfast love that can be depended on to protect from the arrogant and wicked.
I think where I need a new and right spirit is right where worry and fear meet God. God has steadfast love for me as with the whole of creation – on even the darkest of days, like that day our Lord was killed on the cross. These dark days cannot extinguish the true light of God.
In Toby Mac’s song, “Nothin’ Sweeter,” God “fills my pockets with sunshine” and this love, if “this love from up above is all we ever get,” then it is enough and there is “nothing sweeter.” This is one of Toby Mac’s songs written after his eldest son committed suicide. It is a deep faithful affirmation of God’s steadfast love in what must have been (and likely remains) deep pain. This is so much worse than worry and fret. And many people in our country and the world are suffering. God’s light is shining, will shine, and the quiet joy of salvation, not just on Easter Sunday but on ordinary days and even the worst days, is that this steadfast love will not go out.
Prayer
Holy Creator God,
You created the world out of your
Creative love, filled it with beetles and birds
Fish and snakes and deer and bunnies
And every green thing
The world, as with church and temple,
is filled with your love.
And you fill us with light in the darkest times
Steadfast in love
so that we can have holy rest in You.
Rachel Russell