How do you describe God?  What are the characteristics of God that come to your mind?  Some people believe in a vengeful, angry, harsh, critical god. 

Lamentations is an aptly-named book in the Hebrew Scriptures.  The very first words of the book are “Oh, no!  She sits alone, the city that was once full of people.

Today’s reading—Psalm 51—is attributed in this way:  “A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

My mother didn’t have electricity until sometime after my parents married—neither in the home she grew up in nor the first house my parents had. Once she had electricity, for the rest of her life she always had a night light in her room.