Psalm 16: Song of Trust and Security in God
Sunday, October 26, 2025
From the mini-reflection in today’s MAGNIFICAT Morning Prayer (Cameron 369): “When seen in the light of Easter joy, our sins can weigh us down with discouragement. Yet God’s love does not deal in punishment as human vengeance does. God’s love disciplines and prunes us in order to free us – sometimes a painful process – so that we might not die like a withered branch but live and bear much fruit in the risen Christ”.
And from today’s Gospel which is John 15:12-17: It was not you who chose me I but who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.
We know how difficult change is yet we cannot avoid it for it is inevitable. We know how difficult life is; in one way or another we experience pain and sorrow daily. Because life is never free of suffering we might use this kind of pruning to find our best selves. We know that we exist for a purpose and that purpose is to find our skill set as kingdom builders. Perhaps we have the idea that we wish to design the architecture in this new kingdom when what God needs from us is that we serve as caretakers of the needy. Or maybe we hope to serve in some significant organizational role when instead God needs us as harvesters. Rather than focus on the specifics of our work or on the obstacles to attaining what we wish to attain, we might best focus on God alone instead, for only in God do we find a sheltering place that is secure, permanent and healing.
We do not chose God, God chooses us. In this we can be secure; this we can trust. God loves us through the pain of life and not in spite of it. Let us look beyond our immediate sorrows and desires to see where the boundary lines have fallen. Let us examine our circumstances to find that we are in pleasant places with a goodly heritage.
If we are troubled about the pruning that is taking place in our lives today, we may want to turn to God to ask him for the strength to trust God as we ought. Let us turn to this Psalm to pray . . .
I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. Amen.
A re-post from October 1, 2011.
Cameron, Peter John. “Prayer for the Morning.” MAGNIFICAT. 27.5 (2011): 369. Print.
Images from: http://christians-in-recovery.org/wp/2011/06/14/general-recovery/never-forsaken/
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