March 12, 2023
Psalm 95
O Come, let us sing unto the Lord;/ let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, / and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
For the Lord is the great God, / and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are all the corners of the earth, / and the strength of the hills
is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it: / and his hands prepared the dry land.
The readings for this day intrigued me as I looked through them. A reading from Genesis which I read at a service just the previous Sunday, where Moses struck the rock to produce water for God’s people freed from slavery in Egypt. The Romans reading of sins, death and grace in which Paul tries to explain the death of Christ, a sinless soul who accepted death to save us. The Gospel, a favourite of mine, with Jesus in conversation with a Samaritan woman at the well which was prompted by His request for a drink of water. For that he gave her a clue to the ‘living water’ which he offered. The final reading however, was Psalm 95 or as I knew it The Venite. This Psalm is the only Psalm other than the 23rd which I knew by memory. This is of course because I sang it as a chant almost every second Sunday from about age 9 to well into my teens. It was a Psalm of praise in the Service of Morning Prayer. This psalm provided an interesting dichotomy in my mind with what I believed and what I understood. As a student I knew of the many processes and time it required to create the Earth as we saw it. I knew of erosion, sedimentation volcanoes and earthquakes, but as I walked, skied, hiked and pondered nature I knew that there had to be a divine influence on all that I saw and admired. Some one definitely was in charge and control. God surely had control over this process of creation as He had control over the hand and mind of the Psalmist who wrote the words of Psalm 95. I was content in knowing this and it was left as just being that.
A few years ago, my wife and I were on the Island of Kauai. We toured the island and saw those wonderful sights, beaches, trees, rain forests, deserts, whales, and chickens. We walked beside one deserted beach on the north shore watching the forty-foot waves coming in and rearranging the landscape. Despite the noise of the pounding surf a melody was rolling in my head and I was singing, “In his hand are all the corners of the earth, / and the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: / and his hands prepared the dry land.”. Karen asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I was just watching God at work.
In this period of Lent we need time to reflect on our stories and our past. We know there is a God and He will lead to water to quench our thirst or the Living Water to sustain us. He will help us turn from sin and give us Grace, or maybe show us His power to create and sustain us.
May you sing unto the Lord.
- Michael Larsen
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