Psalm 85:8-13
Let me hear what God will speak, for they will speak peace to this people, to the faithful, to those who turn to the Holy One in their hearts.
Surely salvation is at hand for those come to worship, so that glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Fidelity will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Holy One will give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.
Righteousness will go before God, and will make a path for their steps.
You will notice in this psalm that the pronouns for God have been pluralized. The Christian understanding of God is a Trinity of persons, experienced differently by different people, in different contexts, in different eras. Here are a few additional references to God in the plural from Hebrew scriptures as well:
Genesis 1:26: Then God said, ‘Let Us make humanity in Our image, according to Our likeness.
Genesis 3:22: Then God said, ‘Behold, the creature of clay has become like one of Us.
Isaiah 6:8: Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us?”
These all show us how the Divine has been understood to contain all the diversity of gender and existence. We could say that the diversity of creation is an expression of that rich and multi-faceted Divine Life. And that, of course, makes sense as we look around and consider that everything is a reflection of the Holy One.
In the middle of summer, we can practice a new meditation. As we look at the world around us, we can see how interdependent everything is. The swallow needs the flies; the land needs both sun and night, heat and shadow. And we need each other. Our summer discipline might be to put aside criticism of others in favour of curiosity. We might take delight in the oddities of life instead of attempting to fit them into a box that is comfortable for us. We could see in the wildflowers, in the deer, in the immensity of the ocean, both wonder and delight. Then we could apply that delight to those we encounter who are different than we are. Even those annoying gnats are pinches of the Holy One so say a prayer for them while you swat them away.
From the wonderful mystic, Julian of Norwich:
“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love