Psalm Meditation 532
Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time
August 29, 2010

Psalm 1
1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
(NRSV)

There are always folks who will give advice that sounds pretty good right now and then gets more and more bitter as time goes by. As we follow advice to cheat a person or group out of something we discover that the savings in that one area are more than taken up by the loss of integrity. We may even feel pretty good about ourselves in the short term only to have the loss of honesty and integrity eat away at us until we find a way to make amends. Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the folks who counsel sacrificing integrity and honesty for the sake of a short term gain.

Those short term gains left unchecked become like an addiction that has to be fed more and more often with larger and larger doses in order to keep that original buzz. It is much better to walk away from that heady sense of success at the expense of another than to have to keep taking more and more chances with ourselves. To keep our honesty, integrity and sense of self intact we do better to delight in relationships with people and God than in amassing more and more stuff. The trees planted by streams of water have a constant source of nourishment and refreshment that keeps them healthy and strong. The folks who keep constant in meaningful relationships also find themselves nourished in deep and sustaining ways.

The wicked drain themselves in the constant seeking after things that do not finally nourish or sustain. They are weakened rather than sustained by the constant search for that next conquest. Conquests and resources do not sustain nearly as well as relationships. In relationships we discover that much of what we need is present in some form in the people with whom we surround ourselves. We can spend our time and energy going after more and more resources or we can sustain and nourish ourselves by seeking to expand and deepen our relationships with God and those around us.

© August 23, 2010