“In desperate straits”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Friday, November 10, 2023

Psalm 69 (Forward, p. 12) CEV p. 595

In some ways I am frustrated by the lack of specificity in today’s psalm, but perhaps, it is all to the good. Its lack of specificity means that the psalm lends itself to all sorts of situations and difficulties. Indeed, its somewhat confusing attribution of causes, where both God and the psalmist are depicted as being responsible for his woes, something which I had never noticed before, means that it has very wide application. On the side of God being responsible, he says:

“It is for your sake alone that I am insulted and blush with shame”

(verse 7);

And, in this regard, he also touched on his religious practices as also leading to his problems:

“Zeal for your house has eaten me up; the scorn of those who scorn you has fallen upon me. I humbled myself with fasting, but that was turned to my reproach. I put on sack-cloth also, and became a byword among them” (verses 9-11).

But, there also enters into the picture, his own misdeeds, his own sin and questionable dealings:

“There are more people who hate me for no reason than there are hairs on my head. Many terrible enemies want to destroy me, God. Am I supposed to give back something I didn’t steal?” (verse 4);

“You know my foolish sins. Not one of them is hidden from you”

(verse 5).

Regardless of the cause, our author is in a terrible predicament, one that many of us can far too easily identify with:

-the sense of feeling overwhelmed by one’s problems, feeling as if

one was about to be drowned or swallowed up by quicksand;

-the sense of helplessness and hopelessness where there seems to

be no remedy in sight;

-the sense of isolation and of rejection and ridicule, even from one’s

one family and community;

-and, with all of it, the sense of physical depletion and weariness.

Well then, it might well be true that many people will be able to see themselves in this, and, given this, also see themselves as being able to turn to God for His help and solace, knowing that they, like the psalmist, can always trust Him and turn to Him for help. Indeed, does this not apply to each of us, no matter what our desperate straits, or who we are or what our predicament. Amen.

Forward notes: “Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be disgraced because of me, O God of Israel” (verse 6).

“Of all the prayers in the psalms, this is probably the one I pray most urgently. If people found out my wife and I were separated, they might think, ‘Well,, his faith is obviously bogus.’ If they learned about how I bawled out the pharmacy staff at the drugstore when they got my Parkinson’s prescriptions wrong, they’d think, ‘So much for bridling the tongue.’ If I slip up and address someone non-binary as ‘he’ or ‘she’, they might think, ‘See—Christians are just intolerant.’ Whenever I travel abroad, I am constantly aware of what much of the world thinks of Americans and try to be very careful about how I represent my country. How much more urgent must it be to represent the dominion of God in a hostile world?”

Moving Forward: “Consider this quotation attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: ‘you may be all the Gospel your neighbour will ever read.’”