The people of His pasture

by chuckofish

Yesterday the psalm of the day in my Bible reading plan was #95:

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
3 For the Lord is the great God,
And the great King above all gods.
4 In His hand are the deep places of the earth;
The heights of the hills are His also.
5 The sea is His, for He made it;
And His hands formed the dry land.

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 will hear His voice:
8 “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,
As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
9 When your fathers tested Me;
They tried Me, though they saw My work.
10 For forty years I was grieved with that generation,
And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts,
And they do not know My ways.’
11 So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”

Immediately upon reading this I was transported back to the Episcopal church I attended as a child where we did Morning Prayer three Sunday mornings a month. We sang (or intoned) the Venite:

O come, let us sing unto the Lord; *
    let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving *
    and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God, *
    and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are all the corners of the earth, *
    and the strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it, *
    and his hands prepared the dry land.

O come, let us worship and fall down, *
    and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is the Lord our God, *
    and we are the people of his pasture
    and the sheep of his hand.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; *
    let the whole earth stand in awe of him.
For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth, *
    and with righteousness to judge the world
    and the peoples with his truth.

(BCP, Rite I)

In this way, week after week, we memorized it. This is a good system in many ways–especially the intoning which aids memorization I think. Unfortunately in most Episcopal churches nowadays Morning Prayer is seldom read anymore. It is relegated, if at all, to an early morning weekday service no one attends. I also noted when I checked in my BCP that in Morning Prayer Rite II the final verse of the Venite is left out. Do they no longer believe that the Lord is coming to judge the world? Hmm.

Well, let’s just say that I thought that when I left I would miss the Episcopal liturgy a lot more than I do. In other words, not at all. And I still have multiple BCPs to read if I feel the urge.

On Tuesday night I went to the Strawberry Festival at Mudd’s Grove sponsored by the Kirkwood Historical Society. Since I’m on the board I felt compelled to go and eat ice cream with fresh strawberries on top. It was a lovely June evening…

…and I was proud of myself for choosing a seat at a table where I knew no one. I spent a pleasant hour talking to an old man who had lived his whole life in Kirkwood and remembered when it wasn’t such a fancy place. We shared a few good chuckles.

Anyway, it was nice to be out and about.

And I laughed so hard reading this, I literally wept–Drama in Real Life. Maybe you had to have had a station wagon with a “suicide bench” in the way back to relate, but I doubt it.

Have a good day and don’t be afraid to talk to the occasional stranger!