March 17, 2022 (Lent Week 2)

  

Psalm 71

 

Have you ever faced people who:

  • are given to evil, are cruel or intend harm? 
  • speak or conspire with others against you or accuse you? 
  • pursue you with intent to seize, to harm or even kill?

What did you do? What was your response?


This psalm touches on the raw injuries of hurtful people, and the related visceral emotional cries for help, but mixed with that mysterious, spiritual hope, faith/trust in God, prayer, and even praise (of all things)! There is so much of our humanity and the divine in this one: evil and cruelty; faith and prayer; fears and troubles; hope, salvation, and praise.


I have had experiences recently where people I trusted, spoke and conspired with others against me, and accused me. The intents were to catch me in doing badly, scapegoating or to cause harm, which was cruel, and in that selfish sense, evil. So I felt this psalm to my core. David and I were brothers in our  "many and bitter" troubles and fears. Perhaps I could learn from him. 


What a communication; so real, so active, so spiritual! He asks, praises, states, gives future "trust" or faith statements, and then recaps the answers, all while living the reality of his troubled experience!


All he asked of God, was what I wanted - and don't we all! Listen to his (prayer) requests of God: 

  • Listen to me!
  • Save/rescue/deliver me!
  • Take care of me!
  • Come to and be with/near me!
  • Hold onto me! 
  • Put my accusers to shame!

And he was right to ask because that is who God is: God who listens, saves, cares, is with/near, loves, and is just (if you doubt me, look at his Jewish names). I prayed all these, including the last!


Then he praises God, but it's a statement of fact about someone he knows (not like we do sometimes as half-baked flattery): You are a rock, refuge, and fortress; you are righteous, faithful, and great!


This was one of the things I clung to in my prayers. I needed a place to hide, protection, justice, an advocate. I needed God to be hard stone, my hideaway, my defence. As a hiker, an architectural historian, and rock carver, I wanted to be like one of those little mountain rock rabbits that could hideaway behind the hard stones or in a Medieval Norman castle. I also wanted to be defended by a top lawyer or king! 



Then he states again, but not so much praise, but faith/trust statements (of the God he knows): You will … restore, bring up from depths, increase honour, and comfort!


These are some of the strangest statements, because they are the most spiritual, and make the most sense in our intimate relationships: You will...love me, comfort me, affirm the good in me, take care of me when I'm old, etc. For me, still the amateur, these were still half questions (will you...restore, protect, etc.?)/statements, but they were important to say.

 

 
 
 

Finally, he names what God did - the answers to his prayers: God saved or delivered, and shamed and confused the harmful ones.  


God is still restoring me, bringing me up from the depths, increasing my honour and comforting me. But he has been my refuge and strength, did deliver me, redeem the situation, and even shamed the conspirators a little! 


So, God, like my brother, David, may I continue to ask, praise, state, "trust", and remember your answers right in the midst of my troubles. Amen. 


- Jonathan Legg




 




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