When Disorientation Interrupts

 

Yesterday we prayerfully pondered where God is at work in renovating your heart and where are you residing in the roominess of God?  We read how God longs to create order and structure, but we know that life isn’t always level or smooth!  Psalms 1 and 127 are both psalms of orientation, trying to give us a foundation on which our faith can stand.  But when the winds start whipping and whirling, we need to borrow words of disorientation.  Pray these words from Psalm 73,

^1-5 No doubt about it! God is good—
    good to good people, good to the good-hearted.
But I nearly missed it,
    missed seeing God’s goodness.
I was looking the other way,
    looking up to the people at the top,
    envying the wicked who have it made,
Who have nothing to worry about,
    not a care in the whole wide world.

^6-10 Pretentious with arrogance,
    they wear the latest fashions in violence,
Pampered and overfed,
    decked out in silk bows of silliness.
They jeer, using words to kill;
    they bully their way with words.
They’re full of hot air,
    loudmouths disturbing the peace.
People actually listen to them—can you believe it?
    Like thirsty puppies, they lap up their words.

^11-14 What’s going on here? Is God out to lunch?
    Nobody’s tending the store.
The wicked get by with everything;
    they have it made, piling up riches.
I’ve been stupid to play by the rules;
    what has it gotten me?
A long run of bad luck, that’s what—
    a slap in the face every time I walk out the door.

I love those first few verses; the juxtaposition of God is good all the time and all the time God is good!  But then, we open the paper or emails or have someone say something that hurts or see how good things happen to bad people!  How the rich get richer, those who have still take more resources from those who have little.  (I love that phrase how the “Pampered and overfed (are) decked out in silk bows of silliness…use words to kill us.”  The psalms could have been written yesterday!)

Go back and reread these words pausing where the Spirit guides you to linger on the words and when you sense you need space in God’s wisdom to explore what is being said.  Enter the room of this psalm with curiosity and openness.  Amen.