Filling up the Love tank-a reflection of Psalm 41

                God calls us to live in community with one another, to care for one another, to lift one another’s burdens.  This week at our vacation bible school we have learned several action words that God calls us to as followers of Jesus Christ.  We are to move, act, care, follow and share!  I Peter 3:8-12 reads:

Finally, all of you be of one mind, sympathetic, lovers of your fellow believers, compassionate, and modest in your opinion of yourselves.  Don’t pay back evil for evil or insult for insult.  Instead, give blessing in return.  You were called to do this so that you might inherit a blessing. (CEB)

The Psalmist of Psalm 41 obviously had not learned this valuable lesson for he cries out to God to heal him so that he can have the strength to get up out of his sick bed and get even with his enemies. 

                It interesting that his enemies even included those who were his friends.  When he was down and suffering he felt like his friends had abandoned him and became his enemies.  No one had anything good to say in the midst of his suffering.  He begins the Psalm pointing out that “those who pay close attention to the poor (also translated weak) are truly happy.  The Lord rescues them during troubling times. 

                The rest of the psalm contrasts those who pay close attention to the weak with those, like the psalmists friends, who do not pay close attention.   I am reminded of Jobs friends who came and visited him in the pit.  The best thing they ever did was sit with him in silence and just be present with him.  The worst thing they did was speak.  This morning I heard a story on the radio of a man who lost his wife suddenly.  When his friends, who were on vacation across the country heard, they immediately cancelled the rest of their vacation, paid to change their flights and flew to him where they sat with him in silence and held him as he wept. 

                This is what we are called to do in community with one another.  We are called to be present, to be filled with compassion, to be sympathetic.  We are not called to be the judge.  We are called to be “lovers of our fellow believers.”  Who in your circle is suffering today?  Why don’t you go be present with them and fill their love tank!  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!