Rest in the God of Love and Wholeness

Psalm 114

When Israel came out of Egypt,

Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, 

Judah became God’s sanctuary,

Israel his dominion. 

The sea looked and fled,

the Jordan turned back;

the mountains leaped like rams,

the hills like lambs. 

Why was it, sea, that you fled?

Why, Jordan, did you turn back? 

Why, mountains, did you leap like rams,

you hills, like lambs? 

Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,

at the presence of the God of Jacob, 

who turned the rock into a pool,

the hard rock into springs of water.

This psalm is a poem about hope that can be experienced when we put our faith in God who is a force of love and power that can be trusted to accompany us up and down the difficult and steep hills of life. Even when our families betray us, or we betray them, God's love never abandons us. Even when we are feeling lost, even when life seems nothing but drudgery, we have the hope of something greater than ourselves to see us through. 

Reading and understanding Scripture is a way to grow faith in order to bring about peace and to increase understanding and hope. It is good to fill our minds with holy words and images. This psalm points to the power of a force, God, who works for our greater good, a force, God, who can even turn a rock into a spring of living water. 

Reading the word foreign in Psalm 114 reminds me of England, and how I’ve never felt fully American but not English either.  A friend, who was born and raised in Spain and Switzerland, explained to me that immigrants are hybrids always on the outside looking in.