One of the many gifts of the psalms is how they expand our imagination of who God is and can be for us. None does this more powerfully and beautifully than our psalm for this morning, Psalm 121, a beloved meditation that describes God as our keeper.

As we have noted, today is the first Sunday in Lent, our annual 40-day season of preparation for Easter, which, in its earliest form, took inspiration from Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness at the start of his ministry, which we heard read earlier. The main conflict in that story is, of course, the appearance of the Tempter, the Devil, that ancient biblical menace who the New Testament writers present as Jesus’s primary foil.

There’s much to say about this curious mountaintop scene, which appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that we know as The Transfiguration,  and that we read together each year on this Sunday before the start of Lent.

Our youth lead us in worship.