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The Pursuit of Happiness The Book of Psalms has a good deal to say about happiness. Psalm 1 opens the Book by speaking of the happiness of those whose “delight is in the teaching (Hebrew (...)

Psalm 51 is one of the most common psalms recited by Protestant Christians. They know it as a familiar component of weekly worship services. It has been a mainstay for decades in corporate prayers of (...)

All Those Bagpipes Of the texts that the lectionary pitches for this Sunday (Luke 13, Hebrews 12, Isaiah 58, Psalm 103), I suggest letting the first three go by and taking a cut at the (...)

The Shaking of the Foundations The Working Preacher may decide to preach on the Gospel text for today, following along with a series of sermons on Luke. The text from Hebrews is also inviting, with (...)

God is Great, God is Good One of the table prayers we have used in our family has been “God is great, God is good, and we thank him for our food.” This prayer summarizes (...)

Lifestyles of the Rich and Ransomed The four lectionary texts assigned for this Sunday have a common theme: wealth. More specifically, the texts are concerned with attitudes toward wealth. The theme is considered in a (...)

The word “extreme” seems to be especially popular in the language of our day. One hears of extreme sports, extreme programming, and there is a band with the name “Extreme.”  Whatever the word means in (...)

This psalm has long been one of my favorites. While it appears to have been written by an older person (verses 9, 18), the psalm taken as a whole is a prayer appropriate at any (...)

Psalm 148 is part of the Psalter’s concluding section that offers and calls for praise to the Lord. Psalms 146-150 are linked by the words “praise the Lord” that appear in the first and last (...)

Psalm 80 is a communal lament in which the worshipping community calls upon God to rescue them from trouble. The psalm features a refrain that expresses its central theme: “Restore us, O God (of hosts); (...)