March 17/Fourth Saturday of Lent O searcher of heart and soul, O just God. ~ Ps 7.9 Consider a jeweler examining a diamond. She holds the magnification loupe up to her eye in one hand, tilting and turning the stone around in the other. Through the other end of the loupe, her scrutinizing eye looks enormous and even scary. Now…
March 16/Fourth Friday of Lent The LORD confronts the evildoers, to destroy remembrance of them from the earth. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; and those who are crushed in spirit he saves. ~ Ps 34.17, 19 Does God really confront the evildoers? Or to take the more concrete Hebrew expression from today’s psalm, is “the face of the LORD…
March 15/Fourth Thursday of Lent Our fathers made a calf in Horeb and adored a molten image; They forgot the God who had saved them, who had done great deeds in Egypt. ~ Ps 106.19, 21 Today, let us walk for a moment in the sandals of the infamous children of Israel who fashioned a golden calf. Daunted by the…
March 14/Fourth Wednesday of Lent The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. ~ Ps 145.9, 18 Stephen Sondheim’s song “Finishing the Hat,” from the 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George, is a paean to the…
March 13/Fourth Tuesday of Lent There is a river whose streams gladden the city of God, the holy dwelling of the Most High. God is in its midst, it shall not be disturbed; God will help it at the break of dawn. ~ Ps 46.5-6 Peace is a scarce commodity in our lives. Whether it comes in the form of…
March 12/Fourth Monday of Lent For his anger lasts but a moment; a lifetime, his good will. At nightfall, weeping enters in, but with the dawn, rejoicing. ~ Ps 30.6 Sometimes the joy just plain disappears from our lives. Work isn’t going well, or there is a family problem, or we’re stuck on a project, or we’re experiencing one of…
March 10/Third Saturday of Lent For you are not pleased with sacrifices; should I offer a burnt offering, you would not accept it. My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn. ~ Ps 51.18-19 What does God want of us? Depending on the Christian faith tradition that we come…
March 9/Third Friday of Lent “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 Paul Tillich, the 20th-century German-American theologian, wrote eloquently of “the love that listens.” He saw reciprocal listening as the foundation…
March 8/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 Some days it goes like this: all is calm, all is bright, and we experience a deep sense of well-being. Or as the…
March 7/Third Wednesday of Lent For he has strengthened the bars of your gates. ~ Ps 147.13 Most of us are not very good at setting boundaries in our lives. Some find it difficult to delineate work time versus family time: we answer emails, read work-related documents, or take phone calls at night and over the weekend. Others struggle to…