Thought and Prayer of the Day
by Mother Jennifer
July 18, 2024
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Summer always gives me a new appreciation of creation. Perhaps it’s because in winter while I’m often walking head down, shoulders hunched up to protect myself from the cold, in summer the sunshine helps me lift my head up. I look up and around, appreciating anew the wonders of creation that also come out and blossom during this season.
In appreciation of creation, this summer I also discovered a new psalm 104, which is a biblical poetic ode to the creation narrative.
The psalm follows the cadence of the creation narrative in Genesis 1 but with more detail, demonstrating, as theologian Elizabeth Webb writes, “Everything that God has made exists for another creature’s enjoyment and survival. Interdependence is the order that God has given to the world so that each created thing sounds a note in an ongoing harmony.”
As we read this psalm, we see that all God’s creatures have a place and a purpose. And God provides them with their food in due season. This includes humans who are provided not only physical food, but also bread and wine for our spiritual nourishment and oil for our healing. What God provides gladdens and sustains our hearts and make our faces shine.
This is a psalm that is about joy and life and gratitude for all that God has made. Yet it seems strangely to end on a negative note – with the line “may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more”. Yikes!
But sometimes things do need to be put in context. If we recall the biblical creation story in its wholeness, if we remember that Adam and Eve’s sin caused the fall of creation. This is a reminder that God spirit will one day be called upon to judge humanity and repair the world, ending sin once and for all creating true harmony on the earth.
Which may be why, in light of this, the poem ends with the first Halleluiah of the biblical text (Praise the Lord in the Hebrew is Halleluiah).
God has created all things and one day God will restore all things.
In our world where things can sometimes seem off-kilter, the promise that one day all things will be restored and put back into balance is good news indeed. I commend the entire creation psalm to you.
Prayer:
May the glory of the Lord endure for ever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works—
who looks on the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke.
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
Let sinners be consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Praise the Lord! (hallelujah)
(Psalm 104: 31-35)