Today is September 2.


The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.   
  
Take a moment and quiet yourself. Take a deep breath. Welcome God’s presence. And say, “Come Holy Spirit.”    
   
Today’s reading is from Psalm 144.  


Praise be to the Lord my Rock, 
     who trains my hands for war, 
     my fingers for battle. 
He is my loving God and my fortress, 
     my stronghold and my deliverer, 
my shield, in whom I take refuge, 
     who subdues peoples[a] under me.
Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, 
     mere mortals that you think of them?
They are like a breath; 
     their days are like a fleeting shadow. 
  

David, the shepherd king, wrote this song around the time he ascends to rulership over all of Israel. David had experienced a lot in his life: war, peace, violence, blessing, betrayal… As you come to prayer today, consider for a few moments some of the most significant of your own personal formation…. See if you can recall a formational – for good or bad - experience from each decade of your life. 
   
As David considers his own life, he writes this: what are human beings that you care for them?” As David reviews his past, he is struck by how fleeting our lives are. Do you ever consider things like that? How does it make you feel to listen to David’s words: “they are like a breath, their days are a fleeing shadow…”? The phrase Memento Mori means “remember that you will die”, and for Christians, it’s not meant to be a dark or depressing thought. Rather, it’s meant to orient us: to our fragility, to this temporal world, and to the reality of eternity in God’s kingdom. Listen to the text again and consider these things: 
   
When we are oriented towards the reality that it is from dust that we have come, and to dust that we will return, we become more oriented away from temporary things, and toward eternal things. For some who are listening, the idea of our own death may feel uncomfortably close. For others, it might feel unimaginable. What might it look like today to acknowledge, that God’s care is toward us, that He is mindful of us, even though we are ‘mere fragile mortals’?

Music: Our Victor and Peace - Vineyard Worship - (YouTube)