Psalm Meditation 545
First Sunday of Advent
November 28, 2010

Psalm 93
1 The LORD is king, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength. He has established the world; it shall never be moved;
2 your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring.
4 More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the LORD!
5 Your decrees are very sure; holiness befits your house, O LORD, forevermore.
(NRSV)

There are days in which the waves on a large body of water are loud enough to drown out normal conversation. The majesty of God can bring us to silence as well. For me, the majesty of God is not about volume so much as it is about a sense of awe that comes in a quiet assurance of the presence of God. Just as God is not impressed by the volume of my words, either in number or loudness, the majesty of God is not about volume so much as it is about the sense of God as both calming and unsettling us at the same time.

We are calmed by the loving presence of God touching our hearts and lives with the love that only God can give. We are unsettled by the call of God to share that love with folks around us, many of whom are not easy for us to love. When we protest that ‘those people’ are hard to love we feel God smiling at us as a reminder that we are not all that easy to love either. God’s love is not about easy it is about loving.

God knows the world is a noisy place in which more noise can be tuned out as easily as we tune out most of the potential distractions to our daily lives. So God comes to us in a silence that allows us to step back from the noise for a moment to experience something very different from our everyday lives. At times it seems as if it is nothing more than another layer of noise. When we listen we discover it is the invitation to step into the presence of the holiness of God.

© November 22, 2010