March 30/Good Friday For all my foes I am an object of reproach, a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends; they who see me abroad flee from me. I am forgotten like the unremembered dead; I am like a dish that is broken. ~ Ps 31.12-13 The other morning as I was unloading the dishwasher, a…
March 29/Holy Thursday How shall I make a return to the LORD for all the good he has done for me? ~ Ps 116.12 “What can I give him, poor as I am?” asks the poet Christina Rossetti in the Christmas hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The psalmist, too, wonders, “How shall I make a return to the LORD for…
March 28/Wednesday of Holy Week Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak, I looked for sympathy, but there was none; for consolers, not one could I find. I will praise the name of God in song, and I will glorify him with thanksgiving. ~ Ps 69.21, 31 And then there are the dark days, when our lives seem…
March 27/Tuesday of Holy Week For you are my hope, O LORD; my trust, O God, from my youth. On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength. ~ Ps 71.5-6 It is the source of endless bemusement among parents that children born of the same mother and father and raised in the same household…
March 26/Monday of Holy Week The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? The LORD is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid? ~ Ps 27.1 It is Monday morning. The hullabaloo of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday is over. The donkey has been returned to its…
March 24/Fifth Saturday of Lent The LORD shall ransom Jacob, he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror. Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion, they shall come streaming to the LORD’s blessings. ~ Jer 31.11-12 The “condition we call exile,” to borrow the title of an essay by the late Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, is nothing…
March 23/Fifth Friday of Lent I love you, O LORD, my strength, O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold! ~ Ps 18.2-3 Rock, fortress, and stronghold. Such rugged metaphors befit a psalm that is said to be an expression of gratitude to God after…
March 22/Fifth Thursday of Lent He remembers forever his covenant which he made binding for a thousand generations – Which he entered into with Abraham and by his oath to Isaac. ~ Ps 105.8-9 What does it mean to make a covenant? It means that we enter into a relationship based on mutual obligations and assurances. Such accords, compacts, contracts,…
March 21/Fifth Wednesday of Lent “Praiseworthy and exalted above all forever.” ~ Daniel 3.53 Sometimes prayer flows easily from our hearts to God’s ears; other times, the heart is stilled by anxiety or doubt. In these moments of incapacity, we might consider reaching for the Bible, to let God pray through us and with us in the words of sacred…
March 20/Fifth Tuesday of Lent O LORD, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you. Hide not your face from me in the day of my distress. ~ Ps 102.2-3 We’re not supposed to doubt that God hears us; we’re not supposed to question his whereabouts; we’re not supposed to cry, “How dare you?” It makes us uneasy…