Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Friday, August 13, 2021

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 136 – a short course in Bible history.

Didn’t you love Bible History when you were in school? I remember my little 1950’s McLoughlin Notes and my old Benzinger Bible History book.

After learning that copper was Chile’s chief export, an exciting Bible story was a welcome change. Sister Stella Mercedes had the great Bible figures pinned over the blackboard, just above the permanent, perfectly painted border which warned me (fruitlessly🤣)

Oh, what a tangled net we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Psalm 136 could serve as an index for those wonderful Old Testament stories. As Walter Brueggemann notes:

In Psalm 136, the whole history is again recited, punctuated this time with the repeated refrain, “for his steadfast love endures forever.” All of Israel’s history, indeed all of world history, is an arena that exhibits God’s abiding fidelity.
Brueggemann: From Whom No Secrets Are Hid

With this encouragement, today we might reflect on what our own catalogue of God’s fidelity might look like.

How has God’s mercy and love endured in my life?
How has God loved, protected, and delivered me?
How has God deepened in me the call to responsive love?

Poetry: We might like to pray with Rev. Christine Robinson’s prayer “Mercy Forever”:

Give thanks to God, who is good—
Whose mercy endures forever.
    Whose love expands with the expanding universe--
    whose mercy endures forever.
Whose breath gives life to matter--
whose mercy endures forever.
    Who animates life with spirit--
    whose mercy endures forever.
Who plants a fierce unrest in our hearts--
whose mercy endures forever.
    Who bends the universe towards justice--
    whose mercy endures forever.
Who holds the whole world, and our hearts--
whose mercy endures forever.
    Give thanks to God, who is good—
    whose mercy endures forever.