Psalm Meditation 1200 ¶Proper 6 ¶June 18, 2023 ¶Psalm 66 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+66&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶My psychology teacher my senior year in high school gave us a test, the first day, at least the first week. She wanted to know what we knew about psychology before she began teaching. If we all knew the same things she could brush past that area and spend more time on what we didn’t know. I may have had pre-tests before and after that, however this is the only time I remember a teacher giving a rationale for that kind of test. Maybe, even probably, teachers explained the reasoning behind a pre-test, I simply don’t remember anyone else doing it. ¶Pre-testing is a part of quality control in product design. A friend of ours was in product development for medical equipment. Quality Control sent them a report that they had dropped a 200-300 pound weight from 6 feet above onto a medical exam table and the table did not survive the test. I wondered how often a person of that size falls onto an exam table from that height. Our friend agreed, as did the rest of the development team, so they decided to wait for a more realistic test to be run. While it may be important to test for worst case scenarios, it is not always necessary to design for them; that’s what warning stickers are for. ¶When God tests us, it can certainly seem as if we are in a worst case scenario. Most of us know that the adage, “God won’t give us more than we can handle.” is nowhere near true. The truth is closer to, God is with us no matter what, pointing us in the direction that will bring us closer to reflecting the image of God in ourselves as we see it in those around us. As people with free will, we get ourselves into all sorts of messy and dangerous situations which some folks see as God testing us. The important part is knowing that the steadfast love of God is with us no matter where our choices lead us. “Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.” ¶June 12, 2023 ¶LCM