Guarding and proclaiming the unchanging truth in a changing world

In thanksgiving… for God the Father (Psalm 95)

3rd November 2020
Audio: 

Andrei Rublov's Icon of the Trinity (explanation here).

In thanksgiving… for God the Father (Psalm 95)

The Rev. Jerry K. Shriver

How fitting that the psalmist calls us to worship the LORD as creator and redeemer! How right that all creation should join together with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven proclaim his great and glorious name! How fitting that God’s people praise him, thank him and make a joyful noise to the Majesty on high!

What better way to have a devotional to God the Father, than to lift our hearts together in praise of Him. I invite you with the psalmist:

 O, come, let us sing to the LORD! 

Father, unbounded, infinite, incomprehensible: You dwell in unapproachable light. You are perfect in the serenity of your own existence. You are from everlasting to everlasting. You alone are holy. You alone are good. You alone are just. 

Thank you for revealing yourself to us as the true source of life, the uncreated creator of all that is, seen and unseen. For the glory of your name, you spoke and the world was. You called forth the sun and moon by which we may mark the days, months and years of your faithful provisions. You fashioned the constellations. Each one still makes its march across the night sky, a testimony to your strength and your steadiness. You formed the earth and all it contains: beast, foliage, fish and foul. You sit as King, enthroned over the circle of the world. 

O, come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!

The Rev. Jerry K. Shriver, Jr.
Vicar of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Endicott, New York, a parish in the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, a diocese in the Anglican Church in North America.

Prayer: 

Father of all creation, you crowned creation with man and woman, made in your own image. 
Thank you that although our first parents earned for us a fallen nature, corruption and death, in your kindness and wisdom you have chosen to be to us - our Father! You knit each one of us together in secret places. Blinking for the first time, we found that you did not banish us so completely as our sin deserves. Instead, you delivered us from the darkness of the womb into the beauty that surrounds us - a hymn that tells us you are nearer than we could hope. 

For in your great mercy, you deliver us from the domain of darkness and to transfer us into the kingdom of your beloved Son. You have spoken especially and finally in this Son whom you sent to become man, to take on the nature and flesh of man, to suffer and die. In him you have re-created us as sons and daughters of God. As he is the radiance of your glory and the exact imprint of your nature, you have ordained that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is LORD - for your own infinite praise and glory! 

Your Spirit witnesses to us the meaning of creation, the truth of your word, the glory of Christ’s work. He is the Spirit of adoption by whom we recognize you as Father. And through him we cry out to you, Abba, Father. 
We thank you, Father, for in all this you say to us: I am your God; you are my people. 
    
Thank you, for your voice of revelation that surrounds us, showing us the descent to which you stoop that we might know you and rest in you. While it is still called ‘today,’ woo us and win us again from the uncertainties of this life and our trust in ourselves. Invite us again to rest in you, Father. For you are our God, and we are the people of your pasture. Amen.

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