Psalm Meditation 1096 Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time June 20, 2021 Psalm 95 1 O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. 6 O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice! 8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.” 11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.” (NRSV) When was the last time you asked to speak to a manager so that you could compliment an employee who did good work for you? We are very quick to complain, sometimes through the proper channels, and sometimes to neighbors and friends who can’t really do anything about it. They may agree that that place is the worst and no one ever gets good service there. They may tell you that they have had nothing but good experiences with that place. None of that conversation changes the way the establishment works, but it does make the bad experience a shared experience. The psalmist invites us to join in thanksgiving to God. There are so many reasons to join the song and celebration of God’s activity with us. God has created all that we experience around us, the good, the bad, the safe, the dangerous, and everything in between. With all that in mind, this would be a great time to thank God for all the wonders we see. And in case we aren’t feeling up to being grateful, remember our ancestors’ experience at Meribah and Massah, when they got water out of a rock and still found reason to complain about God not doing enough for them. Be thankful, if for no other reason than to keep God from getting peeved. Even if this is not the best day in a series, take a moment to give thanks to God for all the good things that are going on. The list will be different for each of us, and that is good. In case any of us needs a nudge in the direction of thankfulness, the psalmist offers us some big ticket items for our list: God made the valleys, the mountains, the sea, the dry land. Oh, and on top of all that God takes care of us, watching over us as a shepherd watches over sheep, letting us wander and keeping as much danger as possible at bay. June 14, 2021 LCM lcrsmanifold@att.net http://psalmmeditations.blogspot.com/