Introduction

The Congregation Council at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., where I am serving as interim pastor, opens its monthly meetings with devotions. These are the thoughts for the February 2010 meeting. The Psalm is the one appointed for the upcoming Sunday, the Transfiguration of our Lord.

Reading

¹The LORD is king;
let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthroned upon the cherubim;
let the earth quake!
²The LORD is great in Zion;
he is exalted over all the peoples.
3Let them praise your great
and awesome name.
Holy is he!
⁴Mighty King, lover of justice,
you have established equity;
you have executed justice
and righteousness in Jacob.
⁵Extol the LORD our God;
worship at his footstool.
Holy is he!
⁶Moses and Aaron
were among his priests,
Samuel also was among those
who called on his name.
They cried to the LORD,
and he answered them.
⁷He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud;
they kept his decrees,
and the statutes that he gave them.
⁸O LORD our God, you answered them;
you were a forgiving God to them,
but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
⁹Extol the LORD our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for the LORD our God is holy.

Meditation

My grandmother had a pair of small magnets. One had a white Scottie terrier glued to its top. The other one had another terrier—a black one—glued onto it. We called them tricky dogs. I used to love to play with them, using their magnetic forces to attract and repel them from one another. It’s odd that the force that could pull them together also could push them apart. But even so, that force was contained within each magnet.

It wouldn’t be right to say that God was a tricky dog or a magnet, but there’s a little something in common between God and those old toys. There’s something in him that both attracts us and keeps us at a distance. This Psalm speaks of this quality. It’s God’s holiness.

That word means set apart and blessed and pure and righteous. God can make us holy, but he just is holy because he is God. See how that’s like magnetism? Can you imagine anything more attractive to us than a holy God? But can you imagine anyone more separate from us than that same holy God, especially knowing how unholy we often are?

The beauty of our faith is that we believe that there is One who makes us holy ourselves so that the force of our sin—our separation from God—does not win out over his grace—his attraction to us. That One is Jesus Christ our Lord. We can say the same thing about him that the psalmist said about his Father: Holy is he!

Discussion

• When do you feel distant from God?
• When do you feel pulled by him?
• What’s the mix between the repelling and the attracting in our congregation?
• What can we do to help one another remember that God is holy?

Prayer

Holy God, you overcome the sin that tugs at us with the tender power of your grace. Renew in us a desire to draw near to you, to worship you, and to remember each day that you are holy. We pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.