Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, July 4, 2021
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Everything that breathes can praise the Lord.
The Psalmist invites everything that breathes to praise the Lord—with trumpets, harps, tambourines, strings, pipes, cymbals, and dancing. We can celebrate with our voices, guitars, pianos, synthesizers, and beats. Humans have seemingly endless ways to praise God.
People are not the only ones who breathe, nor the only ones that can praise the Lord. We live on a rich, diverse planet. It is home to animals that crawl, slither, walk, run, hop, and scurry. Some fly, soar, and dive. Some swim, splash, and glide. The plants breathe, too. The greenery we sometimes forget to see filters the air so that everything else can continue to breathe.
What might it mean for “everything that breathes” to praise God? As animals and plants have no faculty to decide to praise, it falls on us to keep the planet in a state of health that allows it to thrive. In its thriving it praises the Lord.
Aside from the political hot buttons that the conversation around climate change has created, we are all still responsible for caring for this planet. We may have different ideas on how to do that. But to do nothing is to spoil the opportunity to perpetuate praise. Pick something that excites you about nurturing the planet and do it with wild abandon. The earth will praise!
![1 Kings 17:1-16 [17-24], God’s Care for the Widow](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b39b61ab48de92d991a40a/bf37035e-33d5-439f-a0d6-a68b02d0f1bc/24-11-03.jpg)
