Years ago, I lived near Virginia Seminary which offered a Lay School in the evenings. That meant I could attend after work, and I did so for several years. I took Hebrew one semester and enjoyed the challenge of a new alphabet and reading from right to left. Like so many things in life, if you don't use it you lose it, and little vocabulary remains on the tip of my tongue. Hesed, God's steadfast love and mercy, however, still has a home in my heart. Praying the collect in preparation for this meditation, mercy, bountiful mercy, claimed my attention.

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah today is a glowing description of hesed from the first word to the last. Take some time to sit with the passage for a bit and experience hesed as the Holy Way opens before you. Respond to the Beloved with Mary's Magnificat as you picture Mary greeting her elder cousin Elizabeth, who, through God's mercy, is also pregnant with a promised child and able to relate and support the young woman. Our epistle reminds us that the Holy One is faithful, steadfast in other words, and will continue to work in our lives as we await "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ". And in the gospel, we see John the baptizer, Elizabeth's grown son, mercifully "sent by God" to prepare the way and as a "witness to testify to the light", the Christ.

We see through the lens of our perspective. Having the perspective of hesed opened my eyes to see it in and through each of the lessons, to recognize it in the different images used in our scriptures. With a different perspective, other images would come forth. The Beloved, in bountiful mercy, reaches us where we are in order to deepen our relationship with the Divine.