Apr 7 2019 Psalm 118

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his mercy endures forever.
Repetition. This morning I’m surrounded by repetition. Psalm 118 includes five refrains of ‘his mercy endures forever’, two ‘it is better to rely on the Lord’, and three ‘In the name of the Lord, I will repel them’. 

The two other scripture readings have come up in Morning Prayer within the past 5 months, one about Jesus rebuking Peter, and the other Paul’s explanation about being all things to all people, weak to the weak, slave to the slave. 

Every morning, I repeat some of the same prayers – Lord’s prayer, confession, Nicene Creed. And because it’s Sunday morning, so I’ll soon be heading to church where I’ll repeat the confession, Lord’s Prayer, and Nicene Creed this morning. 

I must admit that as I was reading the second  scripture reading that I know I’ve read recently, I was feeling a little exasperated by repetition. Not again. But no one is forcing me to pray the Daily Office, which is inherently repetitive. So I let those thoughts come and go, and continued in my repetitive Morning Prayer practice. 

And I’m glad I did. 

With the prayers that are prayed daily, I do have a fondness and welcome their familiar words daily. Give us this day, our daily bread. Their repetition is monotonous as much as the words infuse my day and set my intention for the day. If that has become true for me, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the same imbuing could happen with the repeated scripture readings and refrains from the psalm?  

I think the answer is yes, but two times in 5 months isn’t enough for that infusing to happen. That’s like marinating a steak for 5 minutes. Hearing the readings twice makes re recognize that they’ve come up before, but not enough to actually benefit from the familiarity. I pray that I continue with this daily practice long enough that daily, I get the sense that I’ve read, reflected, and have been informed by the readings at least once before. 

And while the same repetition happens Sunday to Sunday, at least for me, there’s too much time between repeats to have the same familiarity. Sure, some of the weekly prayers are familiar. But in my tradition, the scripture readings come up on a three year cycle, so it’s generally at least three years since I last heard those stories. I vaguely remember them, but wouldn’t say they’ve informed by days, months or years. 

And there’s another lovely thing from repetition. While I deeply value the familiarity of things that remain the same, I also value the nudge that the familiarity gives me to find the new in the old. When I pray the Lord’s Prayer daily, some days I’m value the comfort in the known. And some days I’m struck by some little nuance I’d never thought of, and probably wouldn’t if it wasn’t so familiar. I like how the comfortable and familiar pushes me to find the exciting and novel. 

In Morning Prayer there are collects that are prayed to sum up and set the intention for the day. We always pray the prayer that’s used during that Sunday’s Eucharist, and normally there’s one for specific day of the week. Today being Sunday, the Collect for the day is lovely, and if I weren’t praying this repetitive Morning Prayer in addition to later going to Church, I’d miss. Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor. 

Here’s to repetition. Here’s to repetition.