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Morning Devotion for Lent
March 21, 2025
Reading: Psalm 95: Venite, exultemus
Come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving
and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the caverns of the earth,
and the heights of the hills are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands have molded the dry land.
Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee,
and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice!
Harden not your hearts,
as your forebears did in the wilderness,
at Meribah, and on that day at Massah,
when they tempted me.
They put me to the test,
though they had seen my works.
Forty years long I detested that generation and said,
"This people are wayward in their hearts;
they do not know my ways."
So I swore in my wrath,
"They shall not enter into my rest."
Meditation by Jeremy O’Neill
One of the things that textbooks on religion like to oversimplify is the division between Monotheism and Polytheism. In school I was taught that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were examples of Monotheism, meaning the acknowledgement of only one God. This was in contrast to Polytheistic belief structures like Hinduism or Greco-Roman Mythologies which worship multiple Gods.
I find these definitions unhelpful when reading much of the Old Testament in particular. Reading a Psalm like Psalm 95 shows a much more nuanced view of God and a relationship to other Gods. There are numerous occasions in Hebrew Scripture where the need to differentiate the God of the Ancient Israelites from another, potentially competing God is expressed. God often says “you shall have no other Gods before me” or “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of your ancestors.”
This implies the existence and acknowledgement of other gods, and more importantly, that we have a choice to choose the God we describe as God who has proclaimed good news. And thus a reason for some Hebrew scriptures imploring Israelite men not to spend time with foreign women, so that they not be tempted to worship the other gods of the surrounding communities.
This Old Testament understanding of “Our God” being one out of many is not nearly as present in the New Testament, as the arrival of Jesus and spread of a trinitarian understanding of God complicates this picture and again makes the textbook definitions of Monotheism and Polytheism need some clarification and nuance.
Finally, it is helpful to consider the Islamic Shahada statement of faith, which reads “I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammed is the Messenger of God.” The emphasis here is on a singular God, rather than choosing a specific God. So while Christians, Muslims, and Jews all share a (mostly) unified way of addressing and identifying the divine, the subtle differences between religions are interesting in our own understanding of faith.
So how does this play out for us as Christians reading a text like this Psalm? First of all, the fact that we are created and that we believe in God and the glory of God’s creation is cause for celebration. The Psalm calls us to sing and shout for joy, even in Lent.
Finally, the Psalm calls us to find joy not only in the presence of our creator but also in the artistic beauty of creation. God’s hands have molded the land like a sculptor. And we get to live in that piece of art consistently finding new beauty and joy in it and remembering that someone greater than us is responsible for all of this beauty. For that, let us give thanks.
Prayer (from the Church of England’s Creation Care Resources):
May God who established the dance of creation, Who marvelled at the lilies of the field. Who transforms chaos to order, Lead us to transform our lives and the Church To reflect God’s glory in creation. Amen.
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