Thursday, July 8, 2021
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 105, one of the psalms which Walter Brueggemann characterizes as “lively remembering”.
These are psalms which gratefully inventory God’s generosity and faithfulness to Israel. The long list evokes holy surprise, gratitude, trust, and commitment in the believer’s heart.
Today’s verses pertain particularly to the wonderful story of Joseph cited in our first reading. But the entire psalm remembers a Divine Generosity covering generations.
Recall the wondrous deeds God has done,
Psalm 105: 5-6
wonders and words of judgment,
You descendants of Abraham God’s servant,
offspring of Jacob the chosen one!
Reading Psalm 105 always makes me remember a little blond kid from my long ago teaching days.
We regularly gathered our school community for a “Children’s Mass”, either on Sunday or some special occasion. Bobby, a very good reader for a third grader, had volunteered to deliver the Responsorial Psalm.
And he delivered, loud and clear:
Remember the “marbles”
the Lord has done.
Four times, the school body of 500+ children obediently responded in kind, apparently visualizing the same “marbles” as Bobby did.
Did God care? No, I think God enjoyed it as much as we teachers did.
And as I remember the moment this morning, I can’t help considering how innocently garbled my own prayer must seem to God. Because honestly, how can we even imagine God, let alone find the words to speak the mysteries of our soul!
Glory in his holy name;
Psalm 105: 3-4
let hearts that seek the LORD rejoice!
Seek out the LORD’s might;
constantly seek God’s face.
So, praying our psalm today, we might want to hold up silently before God, who created the vastness of universe, all the tiny “marbles” in our hearts – those brilliant but impenetrable mysteries of love, hope, suffering, and joy which roll around in the deep universe of our lives.
Like the psalmist, we can unroll an inventory of God’s faithfulness to us which allows us to imagine a future full of hope – for ourselves and the generations to follow us.
Poetry: Ode to Marbles BY MAX MENDELSOHN
I love the sound of marbles scattered on the worn wooden floor, like children running away in a game of hide-and-seek. I love the sight of white marbles, blue marbles, green marbles, black, new marbles, old marbles, iridescent marbles, with glass-ribboned swirls, dancing round and round. I love the feel of marbles, cool, smooth, rolling freely in my palm, like smooth-sided stars that light up the worn world.
Music: Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers
– synchronized with MARBLES!
By DoodleChaos
Allow this video to open up your amazement. Invite into that amazement your gratitude for God’s astounding goodness to you. Perhaps like prayerfully walking a labyrinth, you can roll with the marbles through your faith journey.
Lavish Mercy 