Psalms for Today ~ Breathing Room

 

Read Psalms 61-63        

You’ve always given me breathing room, a place to get away from it all. A lifetime pass to your safe-house, an open invitation as your guest. You’ve always taken me seriously, God, made me welcome among those who know and love you. Psalm 61:3-5 Message translation

 

Yesterday in worship we celebrated Pentecost, the birthday of the church, when the people of God were inspired and infused with the Spirit.  We honored how the Spirit doesn’t advocate for assimilation, but celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion through the vast variety of languages being sung today and how all understand.  This is the mission and vision of the church, then and now.  The call of us to be caught up in the Spirit.  I love that the Psalmist above starts by saying, God gives us breathing room and a place to be fully ourselves.  And the prayer of the church is that this is not just as isolated individuals, but we gather to be and breathe with each other in our uniqueness and universal need to be seen, loved, heard, and blessed.  Brian McLaren says, the church is where we proclaim and practice, “All of you are welcome here and all of you is welcome here.”  All of you, not just the polished parts that we post to social media.  All of you, the shadow side of yourself when you lose your temper in traffic.  All of you ~ when you do something kind for another and when you make Oscar the Grouch look cuddly and caring.  The beginning of Psalm 62 echoes what we read in 61, but the twist and turn comes in verses 3-4 where the Psalmist laments feeling bullied and betrayed and bruised and battered by the world.  “You talk a good line, but every ‘blessing’ breathes a curse.’”  What a powerful description of people in our world, where we are promised the moon by tricksters and hucksters and politicians and pastors, only to be left holding the bill when the day is over.  To trust in God is both the direction and destination of life (remember the word asher or esher, which was in Psalm 1 inviting us to dwell in God and let God dwell in us).  This leads us to the opening words of Psalm 63, “God, you are my God!  I can’t get enough of you!  I’ve worked up such a hunger and thirst for God, traveling across dry and weary deserts.”  Where do you long for God right now?  Be specific.  In that relationship, in that situation, inside the cobwebbed corners of your shy soul, in that meeting this week.  The promise of God is that God goes before, beside, beneath, behind and beyond us.  Wherever we are, there is God already.  Hold this promise, lean into and live this promise, be awake and alert to the possibility of this promise, and let loose your inner-Sherlock Holmes to search for the Sacred showing up, like the beautiful pigeon of the Spirit, in your life this day.  Amen.