Thursday of the Third Week of Lent
March 11, 2021
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 95, another frequent friend of our prayer.
Psalm 95 is an “enthronement psalm” which calls us to worship God as Ruler. Our verses today also use the images of Rock and Shepherd as images to help us understand the nature of God’s presence in our lives.
We can know God only through images. Most of us don’t have direct revelations. 😉 The images we choose and cultivate have a profound impact on our relationship with God and on how we live our lives in God’s image.
Psalm 95 offers us two pictures of God today. These two metaphors evoke some similar sentiments. They also contrast in other ways. Praying with ikons like these can be a beneficial way to come deeply into God’s Presence by touching into our deepest spiritual needs.
Poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems from the Book of Hours
You are the future, the great sunrise red
above the broad plains of eternity.
You are the cock-crow when time’s night has fled,
You are the dew, the matins, and the maid,
the stranger and the mother, you are death.
You are the changeful shape that out of Fate
rears up in everlasting solitude,
the unlamented and the unacclaimed,
beyond describing as some savage wood.
You are the deep epitome of things
that keeps its being’s secret with locked lip,
and shows itself to others otherwise:
to the ship, a haven — to the land, a ship.
Music: Made in the Image of God – We Are Messengers
Lavish Mercy 