Psalm Meditation 1212 ¶Proper 18 ¶September 10, 2023 ¶Psalm 78 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+78&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶‘Remember back in the good old days when everyone was in worship on Sunday morning and people were good to their neighbors?’ It is a nostalgic look back at the world as we remember it. Nostalgia is looking back to the happy times in the past and longing to be there. Just because we remember it doesn’t mean it happened that way, or that it was as good as we think it was. There were more people in Sunday worship in the US during the 1950s. It was not as good as we remember it. ¶The psalmist has a different form of nostalgia in which God has always been good, while we, “flattered him with their [our] mouths; they lied to him with their [our] tongues. Their [our] heart was not steadfast toward him; they [we] were not true to his covenant.” We were not, and according to the psalmist, and have never been the good people we pretended to be. As God continues to love us, care for us and provide for us, we continue to take advantage of that love by believing that God believes what we believe, loves what we love and is willing to destroy what we want destroyed. ¶The good thing is that the love of God is not dependent on our words, actions, or beliefs. God loves us by choice and no matter what. We can’t make God love us more and we certainly can’t make God love us less. We do better to accept that we can’t earn or deserve God’s love, we can accept it and let it work in us to bring us ever closer to being people who act out of the love of God. ¶September 4, 2023 ¶LCM