Who may live on your holy mountain?

Beloved of God,

I want to remind you that next week (9/3-9/6) we will be on a church retreat at Glorietta through the weekend. This means that I will not be present to preach and that the worship team will not be present to serve in person. However, I’m working on something for you for Sunday that I hope will still be an opportunity for meaningful and careful engagement with God’s word. Please consider coming up to the building and spending that time with others if you like.
Our semi-regular newsletter, The Rock, is going to press within the next two weeks. If you know of special things happening within our church body, please submit them to Vanessa for publication by 9/1. Photographs of any of our recent events are especially helpful.

Our Scripture reading for this week is Psalm 15. I’m reminded of the way someone wiser than I suggested that we read the wisdom Psalms. Many of them are written with the intent of having them wash over you, over and over, until you become the sort of person that fits them. And I think this is one all of us could read more than once.
These are behaviors that one would expect in a righteous person. They are matters of the heart, matters of the tongue, and matters of the pocket book. They are also strikingly everyday things. Did you seek to walk in righteousness today? Did you tell the truth? Did you speak plainly and generously about your neighbors and not succumb to slander? Did you deal honestly with your money?
We could do a lot worse than to lay our lives against something like this at the end of everyday to take the measure of what sort of person we are. But flagellating ourselves over what we did poorly or congratulating ourselves for what we did well isn’t the point. We read and reread something like this because it tells us how to respond in love to a God who has already saved us from our sins. We want to be these sorts of folks because it is a way to love God. Let’s seek to love God by living honorably this week.

Please join me in praying for:

• An end to this pandemic.
  
• Doctors, nurses, PA’s, paramedics, and others working to keep us all well.
• Those who are facing difficult personal, professional, and physical circumstances because of the pandemic.
• Students, teachers, administrators, and staff seeking to do the good work of education, and facing challenges early in the year.
• Those who are lonely, afraid, or tired in ways they have never been.
• Those of us worrying over family who are ill or injured.
• Wisdom as we seek to be faithful and be good neighbors.
• In praise for those who are have sensed a call to serve in our ministries this fall, and for strength and joy as they do.
  
• Each other! (Please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer list.)
  

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,
Marshall