When our world presents us with tumultuous cliffs and abysses, may each one of us find such level ground.
Our spiritual life grows through learning to live in the physical world. Try applying your spiritual values to your worldly affairs, and bringing your worldly concerns into your spiritual practice. Ask God to help you reconcile the apparent contradictions.
What if I had not believed
that I should see the goodness of the Lord …
wait patiently for the Lord.
In her recent book A History of God, Karen Armstrong ends a chapter with the following story.
One day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged [God] with cruelty and betrayal. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problem of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity. They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they find [God] guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict. Then he looked up and said that the trial was over: it was time for the evening prayer.
“Though war should rise up against me, yet will I put my trust in him.” So says the psalmist, and he continues to say this in different ways throughout the whole song. He has enemies, and they have attacked. Yet “they stumbled and fell.” Even if “an army should encamp against me … though war should rise … I will put my trust in him.”
This psalm conveys exactly the same impression we gained from the story of the Jews in Auschwitz. We are witnessing something awe-inspiring—an utter and unwavering trust in God.
We are not hearing mere fervent pieties. It is clear that this trust has been won the hard way. “Evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh.” He is extremely well aware of “the day of trouble.” Obviously there are “adversaries” and “enemies.” There are also those who wound with their tongues. “False witnesses have risen up against me … also those who speak malice.” Yet through all this the trust of the psalmist does not waver.
Is such trust possible? Or is this psalm a lyrical expression of an ideal that remains impossible for all but the greatest souls? There are moments when the vulnerability of the singer sounds. “Hide not your face from me … cast me not away.” We can identify with such feelings and, therefore, with the singer.
The psalmist is admitting that his song is not a boast about possessing impregnable trust. Instead, he prays to be given a measure of trust. Let this prayer also be ours.
Consider adopting a consistent pattern of personal conversation with God. Chat with God many times every day—giving thanks, asking for help, sharing your thoughts. Ask God to strengthen your resolve to build a trusting relationship with God.
O Lord, I call to you;
my rock, do not be deaf to my cry …
Save your people and bless your inheritance.
Near the end of his life, in one of his letters to Maria von We-demeyer, his fiancee, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that it seemed impossible to find any interior solid ground to stand on in the heaving world of Europe in 1944.
Those of us who live in the world of this later decade can echo that feeling. In the flux of things we seek whatever will stay fixed, even for a short while. In the river of events we seek a rock. “O Lord, I call to you, my rock; do not be deaf to my cry.” So pleads the voice of the psalmist.
When you stand in front of one of the gigantic stones that form the base of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, it becomes clear why you might begin to think of God as a rock. The image is used frequently in the psalms and all through the Bible. In the wisdom of scripture the rock is never presented as just a mass of stone.
Since the rock is one of countless images for God, there is no danger of God being limited to such an image. Also, this rock pours out a flood of water. In other words, the God who is compared to rock is not only a source of strength, but of refreshment and energy. Because of this rock, “my heart dances for joy.”
As the psalmist faces the rock in prayer, he begins to think how unlike God he is. He bluntly states his total dependence on God. “If you do not hear me, I become like those who go down to the Pit.” The psalmist’s humanity is so weak that it can easily be seduced—very much different from rock. “Do not snatch me away with the wicked.” Perhaps the psalmist suspects how likely he might be to suffer the same fate!
Now, as is so often heard in the psalms, the poet moves away from his individual concerns. He has said, “Blessed is the Lord! for he has heard the voice of my prayer.” The odds are that most modern prayers or devotional poems would end here. What could be more important than my concerns and my relationship with God?
But the psalm insistently reminds us that we are more than mere individuals. We are members of a body, in our case, the Body of Christ, the People of God. “The Lord is the strength of his people … Save your people and bless your inheritance; shepherd them … carry them.”
When we feel vulnerable and defenceless against the forces that would injure us and our world, we need to think and pray more frequently in these terms.
Often we choose to face difficult times alone. We may hesitate to bother others or divulge our problems. Consider how much you depend on others for the necessities and luxuries of life. Pray that you may open yourself to help from God through others.
The Lord shall give strength to his people;
the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.
after the Falklands War, the English prime minister requested a service of worship to give thanks for the victory. In his homily the then Archbishop of Canterbury did not so much celebrate a victory as ask forgiveness for the agony of war. In doing so he provoked much anger.
However, if a victory psalm had been chosen for that service, it could have been this one. “Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength … The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice … the Lord sits enthroned as king for evermore.”
This song celebrates the fact that the God of the singers is not only more powerful than the gods of other nations, but is the ruler of all creation. “The Lord is upon the mighty waters … breaks the cedars of Lebanon … makes Lebanon skip … splits the flames of fire … shakes the wilderness … strips the forests bare.” Meanwhile, “in the temple of the Lord all are crying, ‘Glory!’” while claiming to be “his people.”
When we sing this psalm in our own time, we have difficulty assenting to these meanings. We live in a different age and share a different world. We are no longer prepared to say, “Ascribe to the Lord, you gods,” as we consider the other great faith traditions of the planet. Ironically, we can concur with the images describing the relationship of God to the natural environment, acknowledging readily that we must bow before a power above our own in these matters.
But the image of the temple where “all are crying, ‘Glory!’” is not possible for us in an increasingly secular and fragmented society This reality makes it increasingly difficult for us