Obviously the psalmist is under great stress and, equally obviously, this has been going on for some time. We hear the cry, “How long, O Lord, how long?” From our own experience we identify with his distress. We know very well that the most steadfast courage can be worn down if there seems no end in sight to what is afflicting us.
We can only guess at the demons the psalmist wrestles with. The language seems to point to a period of actual sickness. “I am weak; heal me, Lord, for my bones are racked.” He is beginning to feel the dread that comes over us all when a malady continues and nothing seems to shake it.
Dark fears emerge from within, fears we hesitate even to name. “In death no one remembers you; and who will give you thanks in the grave?” This ultimate fear is forced into words because the psalmist’s resistance has been weakened over weeks and months. The cry,” [I am] worn away because of all my enemies,” suggests that the pain and sickness are finally threatening life itself.
But, as so often happens in the psalms, giving vent to fears, expressing deepest feelings, has an immediate effect. If we listen again to the verses of this psalm, we hear the word “Lord” ringing through its cadences like a resonant chord, but always in the background. Suddenly this chord assumes dominance and floods the soul with its assurance. “The Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord accepts my prayer.”
And what do we see? Enemies are routed. It is they who now quake. Healing takes place. Life pulses back.
Recall a time when you have suffered. Ask God to be with you. Give yourself permission to feel and accept the suffering. Be kind and gentle with yourself. Ask God to feel the depth of your suffering with you. Ask God to be with all who suffer.
Awake, O my God, decree justice …
O Lord, judge the nations.
among the many gifts of parenthood—and also grandparent-hood—is to witness, and to receive the utter trust of, a small child. We know sadly that the level of trust declines as time goes by, never entirely disappearing but lessening as life inculcates some wariness in all of us.
We need this image of early years to comprehend the level of unwavering trust in God expressed by the psalmist. It is hardly possible to read the opening line, “O Lord my God, I take refuge in you,” without feeling a trust that is absolutely sure of itself and holds nothing back. If most of us are honest, we will admit to a twinge of envy.
But trouble is at hand. The psalmist is not specific. Whatever has happened, certain relationships have gone wrong. There are those who wish recompense of some sort, and they are prepared to be unpleasant in the pursuit of it. Rightly or wrongly the psalmist believes he is innocent: “O Lord my God, if I have done these things … then let my enemy pursue and overtake me.”
But if he is indeed innocent, then he requires not only protection. He insists on recompense. “Rise up against the fury of my enemies,” he demands of God. “Awake … decree justice … Give judgement for me … establish the righteous.”
We listen in something like awe to this self-assurance. But it goes even further. Having demanded that God be his protector, the psalmist now wants God to be his champion. “God will whet his sword; he will bend his bow and make it ready … he makes his arrows shafts of fire.”
The psalmist believes that he can expect justice because he is convinced that it is the nature of God to be just and to do justice. “God is a righteous judge; God sits in judgement every day.” Consequently, the psalmist believes that he has a right to expect justice in his own experience. He goes further and expects such justice to be the measure of God’s dealings with whole societies. “O my God, decree justice … Be seated on your lofty throne … O Lord, judge the nations.”
We need to note where, for the psalmist, this sense of self-justification comes from, because it bears a gift for us. We have come far, in our day, from such a deep faith in God, such a great trust in the constancy that gives foundation to human experience and in human affairs. Once again we are in debt to the psalmist.
Compare the qualities of justice that the world accepts, and the qualities of justice that Jesus lived and taught. Which qualities of justice obtain in your society? Ask God to inspire your prayers and guide your actions to bring the justice of Jesus into the world.
O Lord our governor,
how exalted is your name in all the world!
J. B. Phillips, one of the very gifted Bible translators of the last century, used to insist that our God is too small—meaning, of course, that our concept of God is insufficient. Not so with the psalmist.
Millennia before the first space shuttle blasted off from Cape Canaveral to show us the earth from space, the psalmist conveys a sense of infinite space when he speaks of God. This is not the God of a mere city or a single country. “O Lord our governor, how exalted is your name in all the world!” But even this is not enough. “Your majesty is praised above the heavens.”
The psalmist is experiencing one of those moments that come to us all. It may have happened first to us as a child, gazing at the night sky from a country road, the stars blazing as they never do for us in the city. Perhaps it is such a memory from his own childhood that makes the psalmist say, “Out of the mouths of infants and children your majesty is praised.”
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers.” What a subtle and gracefully paid compliment to the majesty of God. To send the moon and the stars on their heavenly courses requires nothing more than a flick of the divine fingers! No struggle, no challenge—a mere gesture.
Then comes the mysterious question, as it occurs to all of us under the shining canopy of the night sky: What is my place in all of this vastness? “What is man that you should be mindful of him? the son of man that you should seek him out?” The question first sounds inside oneself, but then reaches out to encompass the whole of humanity and the mysterious human story.
And what intrigues the psalmist is the question that has for us become an immense challenge: “You give [human beings] mastery over the works of your hands.” Notice the reminder that humanity is not the maker, but merely the recipient of the gift.
And what is the nature of this “mastery” that we have so sadly mishandled and even betrayed? Even as we ask, the psalmist spells out our eternal responsibility. It is nothing less than for “all sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field, The birds of the air, the fish of the sea.”
The psalmist’s repeated naming of God as governor is a reminder. We will truly govern our dealings with the rest of this planetary creation only when we see ourselves as the creatures of a God who governs us, and who demands that we be accountable for the gift of creation given to us.
Consider some entity that you love in the world of nature—human or animal, tree or flower, mountain or valley, lake or river, field or forest—anything. Ask yourself how God feels toward this entity. Ask God to move all people to love and care for creation.
The needy shall not