Psalm 102
My soul, give thanks to the Lord, all my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord and never forget all his blessings.
It is he who forgives all your guilt, who heals every one of your ills, who redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion, who fills your life with good things, renewing your youth like an eagle’s.
Give thanks to the Lord, all his hosts, his servants who do his will.
Give thanks to the Lord, all his works, in every place where he rules.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord!
LITANY OF PRAISE:
Response after each of our prayers of praise and thanks:
My soul, give thanks to the Lord!
SCRIPTURE READING: 1 John 4:7-11
My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love. God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. The word of the Lord.
REFLECTION: Dorothea Eastwood
Once as I lay thinking of God’s love and wishing that I might feel it more strongly and surely, it struck me very forcibly that I had never yet asked that I should . . . and even as I thought this I seemed to understand something of his love for all people, seeing it as warm beams of light that glowed alike for sinners and the pure in heart. And because to the pure in heart all things are pure, so to these the beams were not darkened nor deflected, for the saints burned with their own radiance and their light mingled with the light of God and the two united together, clear and brilliant.
Yet there are not many who received the light in its first purity, for most moved in a dark mist which they shed about them as the pure shed their glow. Upon this darkness the beams of God’s love beat ceaselessly; they fell with the same force, warmth and brilliance as upon the saint, but because of the sinner’s own darkness, they could not penetrate and illumine him. Instead they encircled him so that he sat within the little black or grey cocoon of his own spinning, unaware of the glory by which he was encompassed. And I saw, too, that by my own love for a fellow creature I could assist God’s love to penetrate this darkness. His love is infinitely, unmeasurably greater than mine, yet my narrow beam might act as a needle-point to prick the way for this vast radiance to enter. I saw that it was even more vital to love the sinner than the saint, for the saint was already himself the light of God’s love, but without human love, the sinner’s darkness grew denser and spread further.
And suddenly I saw that I, a sinner too, was surrounded by this power and this glory. I had to look and to know what I needed and the light came rushing in. If I would ask, I too would receive it in all its purity and if I received it, there was nothing I could not do.
But I had grown used to my dark mist; and I was afraid the light might blind me, afraid I might be lost in its vastness; I saw that, like all the other roads to truth and beauty, it required not only the sudden vision of arrival but much trudging on the long journey and much study of maps and help from fellow travellers – patience, too, and strength and an inextinguishable hope and faith. And yet this love of God’s was the source of all those things.
INTERCESSIONS: Lord, in your mercy . . . Hear our prayer
CLOSING PRAYER:
Lord, make me a means of your peace.
Where there’s sadness here, let me sow your joy.
When the darkness nears, may your light dispel our fears.
Lord, make me a means of your peace.