Psalm 90:12-17

Proper 23 (28) - Year B

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Can you imagine this as a psalm of creation to us who are made in the image of G*D who made all that is and who is to be responsible for all?

It is so easy to get caught simply thinking it is we who ask for patience and for renewal. It is so difficult to think we are being asked for patience and renewal.

Can you imagine brother animal and sister plant and cousin weather saying to us, "All we can remember is that frown on your face. Is that all we're ever going to get?"

Can you imagine these relatives and so many more pleading with us, "Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do."

If you can so imagine, you are blessed. If you can hear, you are twice blessed. If you can "affirm," you are thrice blessed.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/october2003.html

 

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Psalm 90:12-17 or Psalm 22:1-15
Job 23:1-9, 16-17 or Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

Job: "Today my complaint is bitter."

Everyman: "What must I do to inherit eternal life."

Both cases call for boldness - a boldness to complain about impoverishment and a boldness to give all our resources to the poor.

While this boldness is spoken of in terms of its result in mercy and grace, the clearer reality is that it is only mercy and grace that allow boldness to flourish and be enacted. To have it be otherwise, in any fashion, would be to give into entitled rights of goodness or rewards for righteous works.

Where we are left is exercising our right to choose, right up to the end, our response to the exigencies of life.

- - -

how hard it is to enter
a realm of experience
requiring only nakedness

our bodies and riches
become our definition
we cannot put down

without them we are nothing
we are definitely last
with no first in sight

our windup clockwork
does not go into any good night
gently or easily

we complain and grasp
and gasp to the end
shoving grace aside

until all that is left
is unrequited forsakenness
and we sputter out

may our difficult days
and persistent riches
recede before a wise heart

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html