Readings for Sunday July 25

Sunday July 25          Pentecost 9

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Psalm 8
God is amazing in what God has created. It is astonishing that God cares for humans who are so small in comparison, because God has even given humans care for God’s amazing earth.

Psalm 84
I love to be with God. In verse 2 it may be that a bird built a nest near the actual altar in the temple, and the poet, seeing that, is thinking that if a tiny bird can be accepted by God and have a home in the temple, so God completely accepts me when I am at home in God’s presence. God cares for us more than we can imagine!

Some of the imagery is of people climbing the hill up to the temple in Jerusalem. Appropriate for a Sunday as we come to the presence of God at worship.

2 Samuel 1: 17-27                            What’s Samuel about?
David sings a song of lamentation for Johnathan and Saul. The compilers of these stories, half a millennium later, wanted to portray David as profoundly loyal to God’s original choice of Saul for king and to Saul’s family. In that way David couldn’t be accused of deposing Saul.

Matthew 25: 31-46                            What’s Matthew about?
We continue to read Matthew on Sundays at the daily office.

At the end of the world it will make all the difference how loving we have been to the needy. Our actions become our character, and if we have not followed Jesus in such love and respect especially for the poorest, then the inevitable consequence will be smallness of our own character. In that stunted experience we will feel as if we have missed life and are outcast.

This week’s collect:

O God,
the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy,
increase and multiply upon us your mercy,
that with you as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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