Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
As for the holy ones in the land, they are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.
Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips.
The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; I have a goodly heritage.
I bless the Lord, who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.
You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. ~ Psalm 16
In all the times I've read this Psalm, I've sort of just passed by the line "the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup."
But I wanted to dig a little deeper. A portion refers to an inheritance. In ancient Judaism, all of the tribes received land for their inheritance except for one tribe: the Levites. The Levites, as priests, had God as their inheritance. Everything they needed was given them from God, through the bounty given to the other tribes. They relied solely on God.
In essence, that's true for us now as well, isn't it? I mean, we don't get land allotted to us from our tie to the 12 tribes.
But we rely on God - and rely on God's people for what we need.
As a reminder, each week during communion, we receive our portion of God, don't we? We drink from the cup of salvation. God is, as one of my Seminary professors used to say, "done to us."
God is all we need. And we discover that through our connection to God's people and when God is "done to us," whether in Holy Communion, or in any of the other wonderful ways we get to commune with the Holy One.
Holy One, you sustain me. Thank you! Amen