Psalms 69 and Country Music

            There are times in our lives when we feel as though we are drowning.  We are in the midst of a great storm just like the storms that have ravaged the southeast this week.  Our storms though are emotional and many times they are created by humanity.  Our anger rages inside of us.  We find ourselves angry with humanity and sometimes even angry with God.  We wonder where God is.  Hopefully it doesn’t take long for us to look back on the other storms of our lives and realize that God is right where God always is; with us.  What do we do with these emotions?  The Psalmist of Psalm 69 gives us a clue. 

            The Psalmist knows that it is important to take these emotions to God with honesty.  God can handle it.  Listen to the lines of the first four verses:

Save me, God, because the waters have reached my neck!  I have sunk into deep mud.  My feet can’t touch the bottom!  I have entered deep water; the flood has swept me up.  I am tired of crying.  My throat is hoarse.  My eyes are exhausted with waiting for my God. (CEB)

Wow!  Haven’t you felt like that before?  Did you dare to go to God and tell God the innermost groaning of your heart?  You can.  The Psalmist then goes through the next 8 verses telling God just what those he is angry at have done to him.  He then prays for God to save him from this condition of drowning that he feels.  He tells God how these “attacks” have made him feel. 

            What he does next might surprise you as much as him being honest about his feelings toward God.  He asks God to curse the enemies.  He is very specific in what he would like for those curses to be.  These are called Psalms of Imprecation.  They remind me of the country song Pray for You by Jaron and the Long Road to Love.  When I first heard this song I thought it to be quite sacrilegious.  However, when I read Psalms such as this, I realize there is a place for these kind of honest and raw prayers.  God knows our hearts, why not voluntarily share our heart with God and let God transform us and make us whole.

            After imploring God to bring curses on the enemy, the psalmist then recognizes his own condition of pain and affliction and cries out for God to save him and keep him safe.  The psalmist knows the dangers of what he is feeling toward those who have hurt him and he recognizes that God is the only source of healing and protection from that kind of rage.

            The psalmist then comes full circle to praise for God!  He gives the reader advice to “Let the afflicted see and be glad!  You who seek God-let your hearts beat strong again because the Lord listens to the needy and doesn’t despise his captives.”  (Vs. 32-33) 

            The psalmist turns at the end away from individual praise to praise with and for the community for ultimately we all belong to community and it is in community that we seek and find God at work and active! 

            My challenge for you today is to sit down with a piece of paper and following the outline of Psalm 69, write your own Psalm of Imprecation.  Be real with God.  God is real with you. 

We Only Have Control Of Ourselves

When things in our lives are not going the way we had planned it is easy to cry out to God in wonder of where God is.  This is not a new feeling.  Ancient theology from Old Testament times attributed everything that happened to gods.  For Israel, everything was attributed to God, the only true God.  When they weren’t winning battles that signaled to them that God was not present with them.  Such was the case of the corporate prayer found in Psalm 60.  Israel was not winning battles and they cried out to God laying claim that God had rejected them. 

The truth is God does not reject us.  We reject God.  We make choices that move us away from God.  We make choices that contribute to our own shortcomings and failures.  It is a corporate we.  I certainly don’t have a theology that suggests that everything bad that happens to us happens because we have done something wrong.  That is ludicrous.  Humanity as a whole does much that contributes to the bad things that happen in this world.  We don’t take care of the creation God has given us.  That improper care leads to disease and disaster many times.  We don’t treat each other with love and dignity and respect. 

While I certainly don’t believe that all bad things occur because of something we have done wrong, I also believe that when things are falling apart the only thing we have control over is our own actions.  We would be remiss not to examine ourselves and see where we might need to make adjustments in our own behaviors. 

I had such a moment on June 12.  I reached out to my health and fitness coach as I sat here at this desk in prayer and recognized that while I was in school I had neglected a lot of things and people in my life.  I had also neglected my own health and well-being.  My coach recommended two books to me that day.  One was Joyce Myer’s Making Good Habits, Breaking BadHabits.  The other was Brene’ Brown’sGifts of Imperfection.  Armed with those two books and a book I had read several years ago, Sink Reflections,  by Maria Cilley I set out to transform my personal life.  It was not God who had rejected me.  I had rejected myself.  God was never absent from my life.  God is always present if only I take time to be still in God’s presence and listen for the whispers to my heart.  The same is true for you.  When life seems upside down and out of control take control of the only thing you have control over.  Take control of you and your behavior and do it with God in the yoke with you, present with you, and guiding you every step of the way.  Then you can say as the psalmist of Psalm 60 concluded “With God we will triumph; he’s the one who will trample our adversaries.”  (vs. 12, CEB)