Psalms for Today

 

Read Psalms 64-66

 

Listen and help, O God. I’m reduced to a whine And a whimper, obsessed with feelings of doomsday.  Psalm 64:1.

 

Who knew that the Psalmist could predict my feelings today!  There are moments when we find ourselves struggling under the stress of this art project called, “Life”.  There are times when we cry out for relief and release, to feel renewed and restored with the Spirit.  Where are you whimpering today?  Where do you feel like things have gone to hell in a handbasket?  What external evidence do others keep shouting that, “The end is near”!!?  Notice how the Psalmist suggests that God will swoop in and save the day in verses 7-8.  Too often, God doesn’t conform to our timeline.  As I keep reading, I wonder if the Psalmist is working through our ideas about a God of vengeance who is on “our” side?  To be sure, people of all different, diverse understandings are convinced of their correctness and cancel others who do not agree.  We call out those who are hateful and hurtful (which happens within every human heart) believing that we can fix or save the other person if only they will listen to us! But remember just a moment ago we were whimpering with the Psalmist seeing only the brokenness of life.  Hold the tensions of the Psalms that sit side-by-side.  Hold the vast variety of emotions that stir within us that the Psalmist giving us permission to feel what we feel and say what we need to say to God ~ God can take it.  We can go from throwing up our hands to throwing verb punches at others, often both are fueled and fed not by processing our pain but instead passing it along.  Listen today for how so many people still scapegoat “those” people.  If “those” people got a clue, if “those” people could only be as enlightened as we are, if “those” people would…fill in the blank with your frustration of choice.  Then, listen to Psalm 65:2, “We all arrive at your doorstep sooner or later, loaded with guilt”.  It is important to remember that “guilt” means I did something bad and “shame” is I am someone bad, maybe even irredeemable.  The difference matters because we conflate and confuse the two emotions in our souls every day.  You are not irredeemable; you are beloved of God.  You are, remember the Psalmist said, the apple of God’s eye.  You are seen fully and all of you is welcome here.  There are parts of me that stumble and struggle.  I think back to a few weeks ago when anger freely flowed from my lips as someone crunched my car.  I did not act Zen-like thinking, “What is a car but a material item whose only value is to transport me from A to B.  All shall be well, go my friend and crunch cars no more.”  Nope.  I was mad with a capital “M”.  There are times I get so upset about my inability to fix or save others or end up valuing my work based on the number of people who view this Morning Meditation.  In other words, I am human.  In verse 4, the Hebrew Hymn writer sings, happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts.  In other words, when we face our fumbling and bumbling beloved fully human selves, that is the doorway to resting and residing in the Divine.  We don’t need to impress God with our fancy theological degrees or well-read Bibles or eloquent prayers.  God knows us fully, loves us fully, and asks us to be fully ourselves before God.  Can we trust this?  Can we live this?  Let those two questions simmer and be explored/expressed in your life this week.  Amen.

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.

Psalms for Today

 

Read Psalms 58-60

 

Snakes.  Snarling dogs.  Lions.  Slugs.  Howling.  Singing out with gusto.  There is a technicolor vividness to the Psalms.  Creation is part of the holy hymn (we heard this last Sunday with Psalms 100 and 150), which is why I think reading the Psalms outside and aloud helps us embody and internalize what is being sung here.  I love the sacred imagination of the hymnwriter.  I love how order, disorder, and reorder are all being thrown and tossed together, in an almost stream of consciousness way.  I love how the Psalmist gives you permission to feel all the feels, don’t hold back.  Yell about the enemies, sing loudly to God with tears of hurt and hope streaming down your face, and remember God is God, which means you are not.  As Richard Rohr says, “When we pray, ‘Thy kingdom come’, it means, ‘My kingdom go.’”  But we live in a world that declares and demands that I have it my way right now.  I want to worship my way.  I want to go where I want, get what I want, how I want, and be told I am awesome for wanting it.  When we worship at the altar of self-fulfillment, there is a cost that the Psalmist is trying to point out at a time long before capitalism was even imagined or implemented.  Perhaps today, reading these Psalms, you think, “Who wrote this?  Oscar the Grouch and Eeyore and Grumpy Dwarf (which I think would be a fabulous trio!)?”  There is a raw honesty to the Psalmist which sometimes can be too much.  We may think, “Whoa, let’s dial it back”.  Or you may think, “That’s right!  The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and I have the headlines to prove it.”  Or you may think, “I think I am going back to bed to worship God at the Church of the Holy Comforter.”  Whatever your response and reaction today to these three Psalms, I invite you to pray it.  Pray to God about how we don’t like to admit or accept that we are not in control.  Pray to God our frustration that we are not consulted on all the ways the universe unfolds, much of which goes against our plotting and planning.  Pray to God about how cycles of cynicism and criticism take hold of our lives.  Pray to God that we need that sheltering refuge just as much as humans have from the beginning of time.  Pray to God your indifference, inability, ineptitude and your inspiration to let the Infinite infuse you again and again.  Pray the words you need to pray this day knowing that the Psalmist has paved the way for such raw, technicolor vividness for you.  Amen. 

Psalms for Today ~ Explore and Express

 

Read Psalms 55-57

 

I encourage you to read all three Psalms today as a model for prayer.  As you let the words of Psalms 55-57 sink, settle, and sing to your soul today, where does your heart feel strangely warmed that someone at some point in ancient history found words for what you are feeling right now?  I, like Psalm 55, want God to listen to my prayers.  But does that mean that I expect God to do what I want?  Is God a genie in a bottle who must respond to every request?  When do I need mercy, perhaps because of suffering or because I made a mistake or because the voices in my head keep pointing out all the ways I messed up?  When do I get frustrated by “enemies”?  Is naming that frustration helping or hurting?  Does admitting and accepting the emotion of anger help to engage or further enrage?  These are powerful psalms to group together because they echo each other and add new dimensions/depth when taken as a whole.  One of my prayers for reading the Psalms was to give you permission to pray all the emotions that are in your heart ~ the anger and anxiety and praise and ordinary moments.  Too often we can rely on others to pray for us rather than finding the words our shy souls need to sing by our own voice.  Let these words of these three psalms help you find a way to explore and express all that you are carrying into this new month of June.  Amen.

Psalms for Today ~

 

Read Psalms 52-54

 

I encourage you to read Psalm 52 in the Message translation, purely for the comic value!  I think Psalm 52 is meant to be a farce, a moment of delicious sarcasm amid all the somber and serious study we usually think we “have to do” with the Psalms.  Laugh with the hymnwriter on this one.  I love how Eugene Peterson, author of the Message, writes, “Why do you brag of evil, “Big Man”? God’s mercy carries the day. You scheme catastrophe; your tongue cuts razor-sharp, artisan in lies. You love evil more than good, you call black white. You love malicious gossip, you foul-mouth.”  First, who knew this was in the Bible??  Second, I am amazed that this could have been written today.  We still have people who scheme catastrophe; lie; love evil; and gossip all the time.  Good Lord, it is both funny and sad at the same time.  As you read this psalm notice the throw back to Psalm 1 in verse 8, “But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God.”  Recalling one of the frameworks for reading the psalms is order-disorder-reorder.  Order is what we grew up being taught and caught from family and friends ~ the way the world is supposed to work.  Disorder is when all those rules seem to be shredded before our eyes, or we see people flourish who do not show love or work for justice.  Reorder is not simply brand-new, never seen before ~ reorder transcends and includes what was.  Reorder is both new as well as hold the disorder (which will still exist) and the order we thought we were naive for trusting still holds truth.  The Psalmist in 52 sees through the so-called hucksters and power-hungry politicians and flawed pastors as fully human.  Rather than pouring all our energy into lament (criticism or critique or rage), there is also energy for that which is life giving ~ sinking our roots deep into the Divine and the Holy in community with others.  If you keep reading, Psalm 53 echoes 52 ~ trying to explore and examine the contradictions of life as we know it.  But then, Psalm 54 returns to the refrain we’ve heard before in the last few weeks.  I try to live my life rooted in God and being aware/awake to the contradictions and the uncertainty, but that doesn’t feel like a winning strategy.  Sometimes my fear still grabs hold of the steering wheel, blasts the melancholy music of pain, and takes the exit ramp to a pity party table for one please.  Psalm 54 says that the reordering of life isn’t going to lead you to be above the fray and frenzy.  Reordered life doesn’t guarantee a Zen-like ability to rise above it all.  Reordering is a way that sometimes goes right back to disorder and longing for the order where everyone should follow the rules of being both human and kind.  I still get frustrated and flummoxed by the creativity of humanity to bring chaos and still cry out to God and need help.  I wonder, what is your takeaway now that we are one-third of the way through the psalms?  (By the way, you should totally treat yourself to some ice cream and throw confetti here because you are one-third of the way through).  Take time today to reflect on what you have read, experienced, and encountered so far.  What truths do you hold?  What questions still linger or needle at you?  What do you long/hope for as we continue to listen to the Hebrew hymnal?  May your contemplations find connection with the Creator, Composer and Conductor of this unfinished symphony called, “life”.  Amen.

Psalms for Today ~ Amid the Contradictions

 

Read Psalms 49-51

 

Yesterday, we held close to our hearts the truth that much of life is contradictory ~ a compilation/collection of the good and not so great.  Whereas some philosophy and religion suggest that life is suffering or focus only on the brokenness, Christianity holds suffering and salvation (or you could use the word, “heal” or “hope” or “wholeness”) together in the symbol of a cross.  To be sure the cross in Jesus’ day evoked terror and torture and fear; but as an Easter people we see the cross also as transformational.  Our faith is built upon a contradiction that wholeness and woundedness somehow are woven together, just as creativity and chaos played/prayed together in the beginning.  When you seek to be in that space (which is not easy because the world craves ceasing all suffering forever and ever), we can hold a verse like Psalm 49:5, “Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me – those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches?”  One of the reasons I invited you to sing the Psalms with me this summer is because of a verse like this.  I believe that is as true today as it was when it was first sung.  The wealthy still boast and tell others what to do.  Evil persists and insists on hurting and harming, especially the most vulnerable.  Keep reading, “No one can redeem life of another (not politics or economics or any individual/institution/church or pastor) or give to God a ransom for them…(skipping down to verse 15), “But God will redeem me from the realm of the dead.”  How?  Not in some cookie cutter, one-size-fits all plan offered to you by some trickster or traveling salesman who pedals ointments for all that ills you.  No, God redeems our life both intimately and personally ~ as well as communally. 

As you keep reading, I would encourage you to read Psalms 50-51 back-to-back.  Psalm 50 is one of confidence and 51 is one of confession ~ hear again that juxtaposition of having a strong back and a soft heart.  I am blessed and broken, I am beloved and breath/dust, I am full of moments when bad things happen and the glory of being a human fully alive.  Let these Psalms speak to you, sing into your life right now.  One suggestion is to select a verse from each Psalm you’ve read to lay side-by-side to seek how the words play together or contradict each other or maybe even ignore one another.  The power of a Psalm is when you actively engage in letting the verses have a conversion in your sacred imagination and your life.  The power of the Psalms is how they meet you right where you are even though you never met the Hebrew hymn writers who penned these words.  Hold this truth and be held by this truth today.  Amen.

Psalms for Today ~ Be Still

 

Read Psalms 46-48

 

Psalm 46 opens with a power, profound statement, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”  Notice the writer didn’t say, “God will make sure you never suffer or struggle or have strain in your life.”  The writer didn’t say, “God guarantees all life is chocolate rivers and pony rides and steak knives for $19.95”.  Just as in Genesis 1, creation and chaos are in collaboration, cahoots, and even conflict together, today trouble and refuge can co-exist in a multiplicity of ways.  Keep reading the Psalm, “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam (this echoes Genesis 1 and creation) and the mountains quake with their surging.”  The juxtaposition of pain and possibility may not fit neatly with our either/or way of viewing the world.  Psalm 46 holds loosely, lightly, both heartbreak and hearts strangely warmed.  Diverse emotions are all thrown and tossed together like a salad.  Keep reading Psalm 46, “There is a river (which in Genesis 1 is a symbol for chaos, but watch what the Psalmist does) whose streams make glad the city of God.”  Where is there tension in your life that you are tempted to classify or compartmentalize as utterly awful or amazing awesome?  An example, I was recently in two minor accidents.  I was not hurt; the damage didn’t stop my car from being useable but definitely needed to be fixed.  I could say this was the worst thing ever or I could give thanks that everyone in our family is okay.  I could lament about having to deal with the insurance company or be somewhat amazed that I could schedule the repair soon.  Perhaps, the Psalmist is teaching and telling us that life is not black and white judgements (although this is most of what we consume and is consuming our thoughts in the media).  Hold the tensions, not as a problem which can be resolved or mystery to be solved, but holy truths about life.  How do we do this?  See verse 10, “Be still and know that I am God.”  That is the invitation for you to be still ~ stop ~ cease ~ simply be.  The imperative of this invitation is for you and me and we to embody that right now in the beautiful imperfection of this moment.  Be still, breathe, lean in and listen to the unfinished symphony of life I spoke of in the sermon yesterday.  Take as long as you need, as long as your shy soul asks.  And after you do this, read Psalm 47 about praising God!  Shouting and singing thanks to God.  Where is gratitude growing in the soil of your soul?  This could be surprisingly simple ~ cup of coffee, friends, time to breathe and be.  Keep reading Psalm 48 where the Hebrew hymn writer says, “Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.”  That is what it means to be still ~ to be embraced in the eternal affection and affirmation of God ~ to be with God in whose image you are being created still today.  May this truth infuse and inspire your living today.  Amen.