January 23
Ps 27 is a prayer that moves along different points: from cockiness to spiritual searching and finding in the midst of terrible trouble. James Limburg saw a sign in Denver that said, why pray, when you can worry. When others would worry, our psalmist prays with confidence. I find a difference between cocky and confident. Cocky denies that someone can be a challenge, but confidence realizes it and will face it. This psalm is one of confidence, not cockiness. With God on my side what is the worst you can do to me it admits fear but can move past it due to confidence in God, almost to the bravado of Rex Ryan. In the new True Grit, Maddie tells Rooster that all she has heard from him is mere braggadocio.

 

After the confidence,the one thing the psalmist seeks is to be in the presence of God. Still, the psalmist is troubled. The face is elusive, the voice unheard.  God may indeed be hiding. It is a great illustration of spiritual darkness, even for someone as confident in communication with God..

Even in some uncertainty,  the love of God exceeds that even of father and mother. Maybe especially away form home, we know our parents love us so. To say that God's love is greater than that is a love that enlarges our imagination just considering it. Worship is pictured as a pleasant, beautiful experience here, for there we find God to be shelter in the storm.

 

The psalmist needs a way through all the adversaries, a way, a path through the thicket, even with all of this confidence. I suppose we could turn land of the living to heaven, but it seems preferable to keep it as a protection in this life, a confidence that one will continue to live, even prevail. Where do we live in a dead zone, the land of the lost? How do we find our own path?

  

Our other reading is in the midst of trouble as well. The northern territory was Israel was conquered by Assyria. Later, the Galilee was also outside of the mainstream and the power center of Jerusalem or the new port on the coast. It is not a big step to have Decatur County be a form of Galilee. No place is outside the purview of God. No darkness can withstand the light of God.

 

The joy of relief is evident in both readings. The gospels apply this to Jesus of Galilee in Mt. 4. Matthew picks this up not only a prophetic foreshadowing but also for the emotional content of the passage. He lived in a dark time, but then again, we all do to some extent. Parents know the feeling of waiting for a teenager to come home as curfew approaches, and the relief when the lights swing into the driveway. After all those years, centuries of waiting, the Promised One had arrived. 

 

v. 2 has powerful darkness, deep darkness against the light. The events in Tuscon are good examples of human darkness. Victory is relief.

What would be other ways to express this kind of joy? The news that one is cancer free after five years would be one. To be freed is a great relief.

 v. 4 has great images for being enslaved. That could be easily extended to drugs, ideas, illness, that enslaves us. I would assume the Tuscon killer was deranged, enslaved to mental demons. I just noticed that Therese Rando speaks of the "bondage of grief."

When we feel relief from trouble, when we are rescued from a real jam, we know the feeling of being saved. It closes with the excellent reminder that waiting for the Lord requires hope and courage. 2 times we hear wait for the Lord. It sounds a bit like Joshua preparing for the conquest. When we feel as if we face a mountain of trouble, wait for the Lord. Help will come.