“What a raft of trouble!”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, July 1, 2022
Psalm 140 (Forward, p. 64) CEV p. 641
During my growing up years, my family used to describe certain people as regular ‘Joe’s, named after the Li’l Abner character, Joe Btfspik, who walked around with a thunder cloud over his head and seemed to attract trouble and mayhem wherever he went. I’m afraid that the author of today’s psalm, identified as David, is a bit like that. Just listen to his lament of woes for a moment and you will see what I mean:
“Rescue me from cruel and violent enemies, Lord! They think up evil plans and always cause trouble. Their words bite deep like the poisonous fangs of a snake” (verses 1-3);
“Protect me, Lord, from cruel and brutal enemies, who want to destroy me. Those proud people have hidden traps and nets to catch me as I walk” (verses 4-5);
“Don’t let the wicked succeed in doing what they want, or else they might never stop planning evil. They have me surrounded, but make them the victims of their own vicious lies” (verses 8-9).
The wonderfully revealing—and encouraging—thing about David’s lament is that he doesn’t give up on God. In spite of the overwhelming, and entirely disheartening, weight of his worries and woes, he still expects God to intervene and set things to rights. To me this is a great example to all of us, as all of us, at times, can feel as if we are weighted down by a crushing load of worries and issues of various sorts. The good news, then, is that God is still there, is still knowledgable and concerned about what we are going through and will still intervene and help us in whatever ways are best. We can count on that—and more to the point, count on Him. Amen.
Forward notes: “Let hot burning coals fall upon them; let them be cast into the mire, never to rise up again” (verse 10).
“Ouch.
“The psalms can be full of anger, from the brutally violent to the elegantly cruel (let my enemies melt away like a snail in the heat, implores one). I’ve never been able to get used to reading these sorts of things aloud together in Morning Prayer. But do some of the same lines that disturb me in prayer come to mind when I’ve been really hurt? Oh yeah.
“The people who gave birth to these texts were not uniquely angry—they were just human. That these threats come to us as prayer is a helpful lesson. Instead of dismissing them as thoughts we ought not to have, what if we acknowledged them? I can’t recall a single psalm that prays for personal revenge—only that God would work justice for the people. Acknowledging our anger—and that justice belongs to God alone—can be the first step in truly praying for our enemies.”
MOVING FORWARD: “In time, prayer works its changing power on us. Maybe one day we’ll end up like Baalam, who made an exasperated King Balak cry, ‘I summoned you to curse my enemies, but instead you have blessed them these three times. Now be off with you!’”