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Psalm 38

19 Mar

Psalm 38

A Penitent Sufferer’s Plea for Healing

A Psalm of David, for the memorial offering.

1 O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger
    or discipline me in your wrath.
2 For your arrows have sunk into me,
    and your hand has come down on me.

3 There is no soundness in my flesh
    because of your indignation;
there is no health in my bones
    because of my sin.
4 For my iniquities have gone over my head;
    they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.

5 My wounds grow foul and fester
    because of my foolishness;
6 I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;
    all day long I go around mourning.
7 For my loins are filled with burning,
    and there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 I am utterly spent and crushed;
    I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

9 O Lord, all my longing is known to you;
    my sighing is not hidden from you.
10 My heart throbs; my strength fails me;
    as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.
11 My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction,
    and my neighbors stand far off.

12 Those who seek my life lay their snares;
    those who seek to hurt me speak of ruin
    and meditate on treachery all day long.

13 But I am like the deaf; I do not hear;
    like the mute, who cannot speak.
14 Truly, I am like one who does not hear
    and in whose mouth is no retort.

15 But it is for you, O Lord, that I wait;
    it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.
16 For I pray, “Only do not let them rejoice over me,
    those who boast against me when my foot slips.”

17 For I am ready to fall,
    and my pain is ever with me.
18 I confess my iniquity;
    I am sorry for my sin.
19 Those who are my foes without cause are mighty,
    and many are those who hate me wrongfully.
20 Those who render me evil for good
    are my adversaries because I follow after good.

21 Do not forsake me, O Lord;
    O my God, do not be far from me;
22 make haste to help me,
    O Lord, my salvation.

Dear God, context is so important. Just knowing that this was written by David and then provided to the people to be used for a specific purpose–the memorial offering–sets the stage for the words here. I’d guess David wrote this for others to use to repent, but it also came out of his own heart and experience. Maybe or maybe not the experience of that moment, but a past experience at the very least.

For my purposes today, Sister Miriam, in Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation focused on the last two verses, 21 and 22. Here is part of what she says about pain from our past impacting our present (the one point in time when we have the opportunity to interact with you): “there is a wonderful saying in healing circles that I find to be true: ‘Suffering that is not transformed is transmitted.’ Every experience of suffering we have had that has not yet been redeemed and transformed by the love of Christ is transmitted to those around us. The suffering we have experienced does not just disappear; it is most often buried alive. And that pain buried alive continues to afflict us and those around us.”

Yeah. I can definitely see this. Earlier in today’s meditation, she asks where we have “experienced war being waged against [us].” I can think of a few times in my life that were disastrous. Some were because of my sin. Some were because of sin done to me or to someone I love. What was my response to those things? Did I invite you in to heal me? Did I confess my sin to you?

Father, thank you for not forsaking me. Thank you for not being far from me. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for healing me. Thank you for meeting with me here this morning. Thank you for accepting my presence–my very existence–and giving me your Holy Spirit to reside in me and guide me. thank you for protecting me in ways I cannot even see. Thank you for loving my wife and children. For hearing my prayers for them and everyone else I love. I know I have put you into too small of a box in my mind. I know I have limited you and your power in my conceptions of who you are. No matter how big I might think you are, I know you are even bigger. I just cannot imagine it. So give me the imagination you need me to have to pray the way you want me to pray.

I pray all of this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on March 19, 2025 in Psalms, Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

 

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Collect for Mass of the Day – March 17, 2025

17 Mar

O God, who have taught us to chasten our bodies for the healing of our souls, enable us, we pray, to abstain from all sins, and strengthen our hearts to carry out your loving commands.

Collect for the Mass of the Day – March 17, 2025

Dear God, when I read this passage this morning I thought of the Serenity Prayer from AA: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” In the case of the Collect, it is talking about disciplining ourselves under your “loving commands” so that our souls can be healed and our hearts strengthened. And I know this is true. When I am able to discipline myself to avoid sin and pursue you, the peace that passes understanding almost always follows. But when I allow sin and the shame that comes with it to enter into the picture it is hard.

I talked to someone a few years ago who tried another approach. He rejected you because he saw you as the rule maker and, therefore, the source of his guilt. If he got rid of you then he was able to get rid of the guilt he felt. I don’t know how or if that is still working for him, but it’s something that has always stuck with me as a unique solution to the problem of guilt. I pray for him this morning that he might be at peace and find that peace in you.

Sister Miriam kind of describes this guilt/peace situation in part of her commentary in today’s entry from Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation when she says, “We see this in Genesis with Adam and Eve, before and after the Fall and the entrance of original sin. Before the rupture of sin, Adam and Eve experienced wholeness, communion, and integration of themselves with God, within themselves, with each other, and with creation. After the rupture of sin, this turning away from love, they experienced the disintegration of every aspect of their being.”

Father, I want to be fully integrated with you. Help me to be that today. Help me to “abstain from all sins,” and “carry about your loving commands” so that my soul might be healed and my heart strengthened in your service.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen

 
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Posted by on March 17, 2025 in Restore: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

 

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Solomon – 2 Samuel 12:13-25

04 Jul

Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the Lord has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. Nevertheless, because you have shown utter contempt for the word of the Lord by doing this, your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the Lord sent a deadly illness to the child of David and Uriah’s wife. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground. The elders of his household pleaded with him to get up and eat with them, but he refused. Then on the seventh day the child died. David’s advisers were afraid to tell him. “He wouldn’t listen to reason while the child was ill,” they said. “What drastic thing will he do when we tell him the child is dead?” When David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. “Is the child dead?” he asked. “Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground, washed himself, put on lotions, and changed his clothes. He went to the Tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. After that, he returned to the palace and was served food and ate. His advisers were amazed. “We don’t understand you,” they told him. “While the child was still living, you wept and refused to eat. But now that the child is dead, you have stopped your mourning and are eating again.” David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.” Then David comforted Bathsheba, his wife, and slept with her. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and David named him Solomon. The Lord loved the child and sent word through Nathan the prophet that they should name him Jedidiah (which means “beloved of the Lord ”), as the Lord had commanded.
2 Samuel 12:13-25

Dear God, after yesterday’s prayer journal to you, I want to spend some time with Solomon. When I said his name to my wife this morning, she quoted the musical Hamilton and said, “Have it all lose it all.” But he never really lost everything. He just let evil take him over and became awful. I want to see if I can trace it and what I can learn from his life.

And so I am starting with his conception and birth. Born from the sin of David taking Bathsheba and killing her husband Uriah, if David had done things the right way then Solomon should never have been here. After I read this story this morning the thought occurred to me that I can see where people start to build a case for predestination. None of this should have happened, but it did and history took a turn.

I like the little detail in this story that David was comforting Bathsheba. We don’t often think about what this woman went through. She was, at best, taken by the king, or, at worst, raped by him. Then she got pregnant. Then her husband was killed. And then she lost the child. What a horrifying and overwhelming 12 months this must have been for her. Did she even want this new life? We just never spend any time thinking about her in this. We just think about David’s sin and his repentance (see Psalm 51).

So Solomon was born from a union that should never have been and an act of comfort for a distraught woman who had lost so much. Do you predestine things, or do you redeem them? I choose to think you redeem them. Knowing Solomon’s origin story also gives me the peace to know that you have made your plans beyond what my own sin affects, both the things I do and the things I fail to do.

I guess one thing I should add is that I am here today by your will. On paper, my parents should not have married. My mother was divorced. Should she have stayed with her first husband (I don’t think so). My dad chose her against his parents’ wishes. And yet here I am. I’m no Solomon, but I certainly owe my life to you. And my own son is here only because of a miscarriage before him. If that pregnancy hadn’t ended early he wouldn’t be here.

Father, help me to honor you today. You knew me before I was born. I am grateful for my knowledge of you and the opportunity to worship you, even as a Gentile. Please forgive me for the things I do and the things I fail to do. Redeem every action I take and bring glory to yourself through me.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on July 4, 2019 in 1 Kings, Solomon

 

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The Flood – Genesis 7:17-24

02 Jun


The image above is from Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups by Ned Bustard. The image itself is called “And Such Were You” and was created by Matthew L. Clark and Ned Bustard.

Dear God, I looked at this passage this morning and looked at the picture for a while and, frankly, I was having trouble getting anything from it. Then I read Bustard’s commentary in the bottom paragraph on the left. It says:

This large woodcut lifts the wave from the famous Ulithi-e woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai Katsushika and the ark from a small Washington print by Saadi Watanabe to create an image intended to communicate the idea of God’s goodness as seen through the preservation and redemption of the unworthy. The animals on this ark are not the cute, innocent animals found in a Noah’s Ark play set. According to the traditional symbolism in Christian art, these animals are all evil: the bear (evil influence), the cat (laziness), the goat (the damned), the blackbird (temptation of the flesh), the ape (malice), the leopard (cruelty), the owl (devotion), the hog (gluttony) and the fox (guile). The passengers on the ark that God chooses to save are undeserving–as are the people described in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

So, of course, after I read that, I went to 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor greedy nor dunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (NIV)

Yes, I like this. I like Bustard’s idea that you saved the unworthy with the ark and you saved me, the unworthy, with Jesus. The trick is, how do I stop grieving you with wickedness in my heart. And it’s not just the obvious that sticks out on the Corinthians passage like the idolatry and sexual immorality, but it’s the seemingly little things like slander, drunkenness and stealing. No one is innocent. We love to judge others, but none of us are pure.

Father, help me to embrace your forgiveness and pursue you. Help me to forgive others as you have forgiven me, extend grace when it isn’t deserved and being your light of love, joy, peace, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness and self control into the world.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on June 2, 2019 in 2 Corinthians, Genesis, Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups

 

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Peter & John — 1 John 5:1-5

17 Feb

1 John 5:1-5 (NLT)
1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 2 We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. 5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

 

Dear God, reading this letter, I can see where I have lived most of my life thinking of John as the promoter of love. I guess that’s why it caught me so off guard when I isolated the stories about him in the gospels and found that he was actually not very loving at all. There was something that Jesus saw in him that made him one of the “Big Three” in terms of the 12 disciples, but it’s never apparent what that was. Perhaps Jesus could see beyond what John was and look forward into what a redeemed John would look like.

It’s a little like Paul. As Saul, no one would have foreseen who he became as Paul, but your redemption turned his zealousness for you as a Jew to the truth of your oneness with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I wonder how much of our greatest strengths as Christians are the things that defined the evil part of our nature pre-Christ. That’s an interesting thesis to consider.

As for me, how do I consider who I was before your redemption and who I am now? I guess, a lot like John and less like Paul, the thing you seem to be hammering out of me is judgmentalism. Not that I don’t still judge people. But I used to really judge people for not being who I thought they should be and not acting the way I thought they should act. Now, the more I learn from you about myself the more I am willing to extend mercy and love to others instead of judging them. I am better at looking for what they see as their righteous motivations in the moment instead of judging them as having sinister motives that are meant for my detriment.

That leads to how I evaluate others. Do I see someone’s sin, or do I see a character trait that can be redeemed and used for your glory? Do I take the time to see them with your eyes, or do I just judge them and cast them off?

Father, to quote a song, give me your eyes for just one second. Give me your eyes so I can see everything that I’ve been missing. Give me your love for humanity.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on February 17, 2019 in 1 John, Peter and John

 

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