Psalm 106

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POST XLII OF LX

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The Book of Common Prayer (1979) includes a plan for reading the Book of Psalms in morning and evening installments for 30 days.  I am therefore blogging through the Psalms in 60 posts.

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,

that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,

which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

—The Book of Common Prayer (1979), page 226

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Psalms 105 and 106 are simultaneously similar and different.  Although Psalm 105 focuses on the faithfulness of God, Psalm 106 concentrates on human faithlessness.   The catalog of sins is self-explanatory:  they forgot God’s deeds quickly, they forgot God (who saved them), they provoked wrath on themselves, et cetera.  We read of divine judgment and mercy, in balance.

The story of the Hebrews in Psalm 106, in broad terms, is the story of all of us who identify as being devout.  We (both collectively and individually), if we are intellectually and spiritually honest, admit that God has done much for us, that we have forgotten with scandalous rapidity God and what God has done, that we have brought negative consequences upon ourselves, and that God has not gone anywhere.  We, if we are honest with ourselves and others, acknowledge that divine graciousness continues amid judgment.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

AUGUST 18, 2017 COMMON ERA

THE FEAST OF ERDMANN NEUMEISTER, GERMAN LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER

THE FEAST OF WILLIAM PORCHER DUBOSE, EPISCOPAL THEOLOGIAN

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