40A*
A Call to Worship
Pentecost 1A, Trinity Sunday, 2014
Psalm 8

Creating and Holy God, you have blessed us with your glorious creation.
Through your creative powers, you have shown us a little of your own beauty.
O Lord, our Lord, the majesty of your holy beauty overflows on all creation!

Creating and Holy God, you have blessed us with order instead of chaos.
Through your creative love, you have shown us a little of your own love.
O Lord, our Lord, the majesty of your holy love overflows on to all creation!

Creating and Holy God, you have blessed us with your sustaining grace.
Through your creative mercy, you have shown us a little of your own true Being
and Nature, which calls forth from us a response of awe, wonder and praise!
In trust and confidence we declare: “O Lord, your majesty fills all of creation.” Amen.

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Psalm 8

1. O LORD, our Lord, the majesty of your name fills the earth!
Your glory is higher than the heavens.
2 You have taught children and nursing infants to give you praise.
They silence your enemies who were seeking revenge.

3 When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers –
the moon and the stars you have set in place –
4 what are mortals that you should think of us,
mere humans that you should care for us?

5 For you made us only a little lower than God,
and you crowned us with glory and honour.
6 You put us in charge of everything you made, giving us authority over all things –
7 the sheep and the cattle and all the wild animals,
8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.

9 O LORD, our Lord, the majesty of your name fills the earth!

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Prayers of Praise and Thankfulness
Pentecost 1A, Trinity Sunday, 2014
Psalm 8

Holy God, we come to worship, thank and praise you because you have
blessed us with your glorious creation; and through God’s creative powers—
if we have eyes to see and minds to comprehend what we experience and
see - we can sometimes even catch a glimpse of the glory of God’s-Being.
We are overwhelmed by these glimpses of God’s beauty and the orderliness
of God’s creative powers, and so we come with thankful hearts and minds
for these blessings because the majesty of your holy beauty overflows on all
of creation! All humanity is blessed by the wonder and glory of God’s creativity.

Creating God, we marvel at the ever-new experiences of the uniqueness of
your creation, when there is so much diversity of glorious colour and texture;
so many different examples of God’s graciousness to us in gifting us all in this
way. We thank you for the honour and privilege of the care of all this because
“...You put us in charge of everything you made, giving us authority over all
things...” Merciful God, we acknowledge and confess our many failures in these
responsibilities, and seek your generous forgiveness. Yet, we also thank you
that you trust us enough - to where possible try make right our mistakes - and
to also learn from our mistakes. Help us, we pray, to be worthy of this honour
and privilege, and that all we do in and for your creation, glorifies God’s name.

Empowering God, as we are reminded daily and nightly of your creative glory,
but also of the majesty and power of God’s involvement with humanity, and about
that incredible link that God created between Gods-Own-Self and all of God’s
creation. We witness the “work of God’s hands” at so many different levels of
our living and in our relationships, and which God “saw that it was very good”.²
All of which calls forth from us a response of awe, wonder and praise! In trusting
confidence, we joyfully declare: O Lord, our Lord your majesty fills all of creation. Amen.

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A Personal Meditation
Pentecost 1A, Trinity Sunday, 2014
Psalm 8

In his little book “The Spirituality of the Psalms”, Professor Walter Brueggemann
writes about Psalm 8: “...The world is God’s way of bestowing blessings upon us.
Our times are ordered by God according to the seasons of the year, according to
the seasons of life, according to the needs of the day....”¹ When we think about
“blessings” what do we mean? I close most emails with the words “Blessings” and
then my name. What do I mean by that? I have always loved the so-called Aaronic
blessing, and that is what I am praying for my email’s recipients. “...Then the Lord
said to Moses, "Instruct Aaron and his sons to bless the people of Israel with this
special blessing: 'May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile
on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favour and give you
his peace.' This is how Aaron and his sons will designate the Israelites as my people,
and I myself will bless them."³ In the “Beatitudes”, we have Jesus’ teachings on the
joys of being blessed, despite people’s many difficulties, personal suffering and pain.



Psalm 8 glorifies God and God’s expressions of Gods-Own-Being in nature, and in
the world we see around us every day. The Psalm reminds us also of the predictability
of those many blessings, as there is an orderliness about all that God has created.
Whilst the seasons may vary, there is still orderliness about when they come and go,
and they influence many other things within the natural world. Currently, most mornings
in our southern skies, I see Venus above the horizon at about 4.00 am; and this rising
is listed in the newspapers, along with the time of sunrise and sunset; the movements
of the tides; and the rising and setting of various planets. There is also the glorious
unpredictability of weather patterns, which can be forecast for days in advance and
yet can still be wrong, or their timing of weather events faster or slower than forecast.



A “covenant” is defined as a mutual agreement between two or more people. A Biblical
“covenant” between God and an individual - or groups of people - is one in where oaths
or promises are made because of and through God’s own unconditional love, grace and
mercy for humanity; and humanity’s personal or shared obedient response and promise
to faithfully adhere to that covenant agreement; and so receive God’s blessings. There
are many explanations of what being “blessed” means. I have abbreviated several into:
It was always God’s intention and even a yearning within God to “bless” humanity because –
individually or as a community - humanity was and is always the central focus of God’s
loving and faithful covenant agreements. These “blessings” were intended to empower
people to become more fully human under God’s guidance; and to be the motivation to
live a life of “blessedness” in partnership with God, by being obedient and faithful to
God’s will and ways as humanity – individually and in community - interprets them. May
God indeed bless you now, and in the days ahead as you seek to follow God’s guidance.



1 Text by Professor Walter Brueggemann from “The Spirituality of the Psalms”, [chapter 2, page 22]
© 2002 Augsburg Fortress Publishing House Minneapolis MN 55440, USA

2 Genesis 1: 10b (NLT)

3 Numbers 6:22-27 (NLT)

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Acknowledgements:
Unless stated otherwise, all Bible readings and extracts used in these weekly Prayers and
Meditations are from the ‘New Living Translation’, © 1996. Copyright. All rights reserved.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189 USA.

*Revised Indexing Scheme from 'Consultation on Church Union' (COCU).

I acknowledge and give heartfelt thanks for the theological inspiration available from the writings of Professor
Walter Brueggemann; and through the resources from the internet and “The Text this Week” (Textweek).

If the Prayers and/or Meditations are used in shared worship, please provide this acknowledgement:
© 2014 Joan Stott – ‘The Timeless Psalms’ RCL Psalms Year A. Used with permission.

jstott@netspace.net.au
www.thetimelesspsalms.net

Download/view a pdf file of this document here: pentecost1a_2014.pdf

© 2014 Joan Stott - " The Timeless Psalms" RCL Psalm Year A