Psalm 114:1-8  When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,  ² Judah became God's sanctuary, Israel his dominion.  ³ The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back.  ⁴ The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.  ⁵ Why is it, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back?  ⁶ O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs?  ⁷ Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the God of Jacob,  ⁸ who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.

            Our devotion this week comes from the Psalms.  We don’t normally dwell on the psalms a lot during the worship service.  Often times, we read them responsively and move on.  Sometimes they have similarities with the other lessons, and sometimes they don’t.  Psalm 114 appears in our three year lectionary cycle twice.  The first occasion is during the Easter Vigil liturgy, and the second time appears later in the ordinary time readings that are also known as the season after Pentecost. 

            Psalm 114 is a psalm that proclaims the wonders of God at the Exodus.  It can be divided into three sections:  The opening (1-2), the body (3-6) and the closing (7-8).  This text lifts up the wonders that happened while the Hebrews journeyed on their way out of Egypt to the promise land.  But like many of the psalms, this text also refers to other wonders of God.  One of the resources that I found on this text comes from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).  Their commentary on this psalm is printed below. 

[Psalm 114] A hymn celebrating Israel's escape from Egypt, journey through the wilderness, and entry into the promised land, and the miracles of nature that bore witness to God's presence in their midst. In the perspective of the psalm, the people proceed directly from Egypt into the promised land (Psalm 114:1-2). Sea and Jordan, which stood like soldiers barring the people from their land, flee before the mighty God as the earth recoils from the battle (Psalm 114:3-4). The poet taunts the natural elements as one taunts defeated enemies (Psalm 114:5-6).

 [3-4] Pairs of cosmic elements such as sea and rivers, mountains and hills, are sometimes mentioned in creation accounts. Personified here as warriors, the pairs tremble in fear before the Divine Warrior. The quaking also recalls the divine appearance in the storm at Sinai (Exodus 19:16-19) and elsewhere (Judges 5:4-5; Psalm 18:7-15).

 [8] The miracles of giving drink to the people in the arid desert. Cf Exodus 17:1-7; Isaiah 41:17-18.

I hope you take some time and look up the other Bible verses that are mentioned.  They help to put this psalm into context, while at the same time connecting it to other parts of the Bible.  The psalms are a wonderful and enlightening set of texts that we can and do use on a regular basis to bridge the Bible with itself, with us, and with our everyday living situations.

In our prayers this week:  Robert, Ann, Charles, and Scott.

It is my understanding that Robert is being moved to the Hospice House later today.  Please pray that this will be a comforting transition for him.

God’s Peace,