We hear from Genesis today as we get closer to Holy Week. Our reading from Genesis tells us about the covenant God made with Abraham. God promised to be faithful to Abraham and his descendants; God made Abraham the father of a great nation. Another reading that we often hear during the season of Lent is from the prophet Jeremiah, which speaks about the new covenant that God will write onto the hearts of the people. We in our modern world see the heart as the seat of our emotions; the Ancient Israelites also saw the heart as the center of their thought, intellect, and being, in the same way we in the modern Western world see our brain and our soul. So, writing his covenant on their hearts would mean embossing it on their very being. We hear about covenants so much during Lent because Jesus is our new covenant, because the salvation Jesus brings us through his death and resurrection is our new covenant.
“The Lord remembers his covenant forever” – the psalmist expresses great confidence in this statement in Psalm 105. Think about when you have gone through a dark or difficult moment in your life, when it takes everything you’ve got to make it to the next day, when you walk by faith because daily life is such a battle. Sometimes we need to take it one day at a time. Sometimes that is the best we can do. But God never forgets the covenant He makes with his people, that He makes with us.
“Look to the Lord in his strength, seek to serve him constantly.” May we truly believe the words of our psalm today, placing our trust in our Lord, placing our trust in the covenant he has made with his people.
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