Day 14 - Tuesday, March 15
Title: THE LORD’S TENDER MERCIES
Scripture: Psalms 103
Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases,
Who redeems your life from destruction,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
Who satisfies your mouth with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

The Lord executes righteousness
And justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the children of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.
He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor punished us according to our iniquities.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children,
So the Lord pities those who fear Him.
For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.
But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them.

The Lord has established His throne in heaven,
And His kingdom rules over all.

Bless the Lord, you His angels,
Who excel in strength, who do His word,
Heeding the voice of His word.
Bless the Lord, all you His hosts,
You ministers of His, who do His pleasure.
Bless the Lord, all His works,
In all places of His dominion.

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

Poetry:
Lord, Hear My Prayer
by John Clare

Lord, hear my prayer when trouble glooms,
Let sorrow find a way,
And when the day of trouble comes,
Turn not thy face away:
My bones like hearthstones burn away,
My life like vapoury smoke decays.

My heart is smitten like the grass,
That withered lies and dead,
And I, so lost to what I was,
Forget to eat my bread.
My voice is groaning all the day,
My bones prick through this skin of clay.

The wilderness’s pelican,
The desert’s lonely owl—
I am their like, a desert man
In ways as lone and foul.
As sparrows on the cottage top
I wait till I with fainting drop.

I hear my enemies reproach,
All silently I mourn;
They on my private peace encroach,
Against me they are sworn.
Ashes as bred my trouble shares,
And mix my food with weeping cares.

Yet not for them is sorrow’s toil,
I fear no mortal’s frowns—
But thou hast held me up awhile
And thou has cast me down.
My days like shadows waste from view,
I mourn like withered grass in dew.

But thou, Lord, shalt endure for ever,
All generations through;
Thou shalt to Zion be the giver
Of joy and mercy too.
Her very stones are in thy trust,
Thy servants reverence her dust.

Heathens shall hear and fear thy name,
All kings of earth thy glory know
When thou shalt build up Zion’s fame
And live in glory there below.
He’ll not despise their prayers, though mute,
But still regard the destitute.

FORGET NOT ALL HIS BENEFITS: A REMINDER IN DARK TIMES

He sat at the head of an oval table that had clear plastic over its lace tablecloth. Leaning back in his chair, my grandfather led a Bible study and a Russian lesson for me and my brothers each Saturday afternoon. He was a small man, balding, with a tiny mustache. Yet to us, he was large —a man with strong hands and a strong back who could fix anything. He would patiently turn each spoke on our bicycle wheels so they spun straight. With my grandmother, my Dad, and his sister he had come to the United States, via Chicago, in the late 1940s as a refugee from Ukraine. His blue eyes behind glasses were courageous yet careful—skeptical of popular culture in this adopted land. The world was not safe. He had experienced that under occupation of Nazi forces in his village, and again as he and his family fled Stalinist Russia. He had an unexplained scar on one muscular arm.

My grandfather required Scripture memorization of us at that table on Saturdays. Later in the evening he taught us to pray too, kneeling with Grandma on the spotless linoleum facing the pads on butter-colored kitchen chairs. “Bless the Lord, O my soul,” he would say to us across that table, and get us to say it back. At points in the passage his cadence would slow and his voice would get soft with passion. “Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy,” he would say. And it was like he was speaking to himself. Anger was part of our upbringing. Immigrant life is hard with many unknowns—from the past, from new realities, with so much incongruity. We feared the wrath of my grandfather and my Dad. Yet as quickly as their anger flared, it would be gone. We knew we were loved. And we had the sense that there was mercy from them—and, by extension, from God.

Children rarely understand death or the limits of life. So when Grandpa lingered over “his days are like grass; as a flower of the field so he flourishes” and “the wind passes over it and it is gone” we had no real idea of what it meant. He did.

Grandpa went to be with the Lord first. A few years later, on the week of my grandmother’s funeral, the family cleaned out their house (we got to pick what we’d keep). It was soon sold. And the place where we’d learned to eat borscht and varenikes and pierogies belonged to someone else—someone with no grasp of the struggle behind those brown-brick walls.

Ah, “but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting,” Grandpa had us memorize. As if knowing we’d need those words someday, he drilled them into us. Artwork for today’s devotional, “all flesh is grass,” speaks with subtle hues of temporality; the music of “Bless the Lord” raises our eyes; and Clare’s poem assures us: God hears heart cries in bleak places.

Prayer:
O God, you know our frame. You are mindful of our fragility. We are but dust. Forgive us for living as if all that is around us had permanence. So soon, all of it—and we—will be gone. Yet you remain. Your mercy, everlasting, is our hope and the rock to which we cling. Thank you for the promises of your Word to us, and even more for your love that swept us up out of the mire and wiped us clean with your blood. We are yours. And we claim the promise that as we live our lives in reverence of you, in obedience, that you will do good—that you will be good—to our children, and their children, and children after them. May our legacy be one grounded in your timeless salvation and righteousness. 
All this we pray in Jesus, name,
Amen.

Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Chair, Department of Digital Journalism & Media
School of Fine Arts & Communication
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.