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Journey to Jerusalem Day 21

Tuesday, March 17 Psalm 95:6-11
6 Oh 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.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your fathers put me to the test
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 who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
11 Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”


Along with "the people of his pasture," the realm of nature is summoned in Psalm 95 to join in the worship of our common creator. Writing in the Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, Massey Shepherd is struck by the comprehension in worship themes found here. The text induces in us praise for "the majesty and glory of God manifest in the created order which He has made and over which He presides, His tender care and providence for His people as of a shepherd for his flock, and the stern but just demands of righteousness and truth that he makes upon them as their final Judge."
Remember that this psalm (the Venite) kick starts the Morning Office. It bids us to tackle the psalms immediately following with the same attitudes of trust and sincerity we've employed in belting out 95. Whether the themes and moods of worship in saying the given Office veer towards the personal or communal, the comprehension of Psalm 95 puts our head in the game.
Don't ignore a treasure of Anglican spirituality moldering on your bookshelf. Praying the Prayer Book Offices allows your voice to be lifted above the din to heaven. It can be the occasion for angels to move, demons to flee, and finding a God who breaks into the midst of our very complex world—you remember, the one He made.
Or the thing can just sit there on your shelf as one hardens one’s heart a little more each day.


Minister. O Lord, show thy mercy upon us.
Answer. And grant us thy salvation.
Minister. O God, make clean our hearts within us.
Answer. And take not thy Holy Spirit from us.