March 12/Third Friday of Lent “O Israel, if you would but listen to me!If only my people would hear me, and Israel walk in my ways, I would feed them with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them.” ~ Ps 81.14, 17 It is a longstanding joke in my family that my father began to…
Category: Songs for Lent
Song 20: Testing, Testing
March 11/Third Thursday of Lent “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the desert,Where your fathers tempted me; they tested me though they had seen my works.” ~ Ps 95.8-9 It is easy to have faith when things are going along smoothly, isn’t it? When our hopes or dreams are realized, when things go…
Song 19: Boundaries
March 10/Third Wednesday of Lent For he has strengthened the bars of your gates. ~ Ps 147.13 Walls, fences, gates — they can function as tools of exclusion. But looked at from another perspective, they create spaces that are protected and apart (interestingly, the Hebrew word for holiness connotes apartness). Think of garden walls that frame a beautiful outdoor room,…
Song 18: Love 101
March 9/Third Tuesday of Lent Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. ~ Ps 25.4-5 Not long ago, I observed one of those birthdays considered “significant.” Unable to celebrate in suitable fashion, instead I made a list of the people…
Song 17: Desideratum
March 8/Third Monday of Lent As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God? ~ Ps 42.2-3 After long months of Zoom Mass, our parish church doors cracked open over the summer, with no choir,…
Song 16: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
March 6/Second Saturday of Lent For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us. ~ Ps 103.11-12 We live in an unforgiving time. One verbal misstep can derail a career; a long-ago article or…
Song 15: Dark Inscrutable Workmanship
March 5/Second Friday of Lent When the LORD called down a famine on the land and ruined the crop that sustained them, He sent a man before them, Joseph, sold as a slave. ~ Ps 105.16-17 Between the specter of new COVID-19 variants and the massive winter storm of mid-February that left so many Americans in abject misery and disrupted…
Song 14: Water, Water, Everywhere
March 4/Second Thursday of Lent He is like a tree planted near running water, That yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. ~ Ps 1.3 My husband has remarked more than once that the surest way to kill a plant is to put it under my care. He has a point. I have lost count of the…
Song 13: Words to Live By
March 3/Second Wednesday of Lent Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God. ~ Ps 31.6 “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” Is there a more compelling and powerful expression of trust in the entire Bible? Jesus uttered it from the cross at the moment of his death, and that cry has…
Song 12: Keeping Up Appearances
March 2/Second Tuesday of Lent “Why do you recite my statutes, and profess my covenant with your mouth, Though you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?To him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.” ~ Ps 50.16-17, 23 The other day during a phone conversation, a friend heard me commenting about someone in…