Psalm 99 (NRSV)
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Verse 1The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
Verse 2The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.
Verse 3Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!
Verse 4Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.
Verse 5Extol the Lord our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!
Verse 6Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.
Verse 7He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them.
Verse 8O Lord our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
Verse 9Extol the Lord our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy.
Devotion
Great is the Lord! is the shout of the Psalmist. This one recognizes God's loving and powerful engagement with the world. The Psalm sings of the holiness and power of God, tethered to a divinely executed justice, which is governed by mercy and forgiveness. This is the God we worship, revealed even more profoundly and clearly in the being and ministry of Jesus.
Being among those who claim to follow this Jesus (our God with skin on) we exalt the Divine in generous and gracious living. We climb the holy mountain with our ancestors in the faith to worship, trusting God to do God's best work in this world. As the season of light and dawning awareness draws to a close, pray that we will remain open to God's imagination for ways to faithfully partner with God in accomplishing the saving work God sets out to do.
Prayer
O God of our epiphanies, make your will and ways dawn upon us that we might faithfully follow you into your world, directed by your words and Word, Jesus Christ! For you are, indeed, holy and mighty, the focus of our worth-ship and praise. Amen.