Psalm Meditation 1230 ¶Second Sunday After Epiphany ¶January 14, 2024 ¶Psalm 96 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+96&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶Some of us, many of us, are so sure that we are right about just about everything that we will alter facts in order to continue to convince others, and ourselves, that we are right. The psalmist is among those who believe, ‘when anyone disagrees with me, they must be wrong.’ It is not possible for each of us to be right from our particular perspectives, there has to be one right and the rest of you are wrong. The only reason I might be right about this, would be because I agree with you. ¶The psalmist makes the perfectly normal statement that, “all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.” This was from a time in which it was accepted that there were others divine beings in addition to our own. ‘They are not real, and do not exist except in images ‘those’ people worship. So, you are free to worship some other deity or group of deities as long as you know that my form of worship is the only authentic and meaningful form of worship. ¶I have come to believe that there is only one God. This monotheism is my history and tradition. Where I seem to differ from many folks these days is that if you describe your deity differently than do I it is because you have found a reason to emphasize an aspect of the one God that is not a part of my description of God. It continues to be the same God in a different environment and context. If you choose to divide your deity into separate beings for each attribute, it is, to me, the one God described differently. ¶January 9, 2024 ¶LCM