Psalm Meditation 617
Second Sunday of Easter
April 15, 2012

Psalm 18 (selected verses)
1 I love you, O Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, so I shall be saved from my enemies.
25 With the loyal you show yourself loyal; with the blameless you show yourself blameless;
26 with the pure you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you show yourself perverse.
27 For you deliver a humble people, but the haughty eyes you bring down.
28 It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness.
29 By you I can crush a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall.
30 This God—his way is perfect; the promise of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
43 You delivered me from strife with the peoples; you made me head of the nations; people whom I had not known served me.
44 As soon as they heard of me they obeyed me; foreigners came cringing to me.
45 Foreigners lost heart, and came trembling out of their strongholds.
46 The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock, and exalted be the God of my salvation,
47 the God who gave me vengeance and subdued peoples under me;
48 who delivered me from my enemies; indeed, you exalted me above my adversaries; you delivered me from the violent.
49 For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name.
50 Great triumphs he gives to his king, and shows steadfast love to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever. (NRSV)

Is God so malleable that we can make God in our image or is God so beyond our comprehension that we can see whoever we are mirrored back to us in our image of God? My guess is that we see who we are reflected back to us in our image of God. It is rare that a gentle and loving person will see God as violent and angry. It is also rare for a an angry person to see God as gentle and forgiving. It is often the case that we see ourselves reflected back to us in our relationships with God as well as with others.

Humble folks recognize their need for help from God and from those around them. Once the need is recognized, these folks will have no difficulty asking for the help they need. And since most of us are willing to help those in need we are quick to offer the help we are able to provide. Secure in the knowledge that they are not alone, humble folks seem able to do great things.

Haughty folks, on the other hand, don’t feel the need or desire to get help from anyone. They end up muddling through by force of will and they skills they possess on their own. When a personally insurmountable situation arises they have nowhere to turn and they are brought down by their insistence on doing it on their own strength. It is not that God and others are not willing and available, it is that the haughty do not recognize either their need for help or the willingness of others to offer the help they need.

God is present with us and offers us what we are willing and able to expect. It is possible and even probable that God is at work in our lives doing things of which we are not aware. It is not that God can’t act beyond our ability to ask and receive so much as it is that we can’t notice the activity of God beyond our ability to comprehend God’s presence and activity.

© April 9, 2012