Journey through Lent with the Psalms, 48 through 51

Today's map of psalm readings offers many dimensions for reflection. Reading could focus on Psalm 51 alone, the classic psalm of confession which is said, chanted, or sung in Ash Wednesday worship. Or, Psalm 50 that clearly places God as the eternal judge of heaven and earth and the people of God as defendants in God's court. Within these psalms are varied places for reflection that God is God and we are not. However, Psalm 48 offers an image perhaps less familiar, that as the city as the dwelling place of God. The city of Jerusalem experienced by the pilgrim as a metaphor for the coming reign of God. As James L. Mays comments, "The way in which the psalm speaks of Jerusalem as Zion, the city of David as the city of God, is a way of envisioning the earthily terms of the heavenly, the temporal in terms of the everlasting…The psalm uncovers what modern Christians can easily lose, the discernment of the church as a society created in the finite and temporal by the infinite and everlasting." How would it change the ways you participated and cared for your church community if you recognized its very existence as a community created by the 'infinite and everlasting' God?