Psalm Meditation 658
Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 27, 2013

Psalm 56
1 Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me; all day long foes oppress me;
2 my enemies trample on me all day long, for many fight against me. O Most High,
3 when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid; what can flesh do to me?
5 All day long they seek to injure my cause; all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They stir up strife, they lurk, they watch my steps. As they hoped to have my life,
7 so repay them for their crime; in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
8 You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record?
9 Then my enemies will retreat in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me.
10 In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise,
11 in God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?
12 My vows to you I must perform, O God; I will render thank offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.
(NRSV)

We like to trust our memories as being accurate, especially as we remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard about or witnessed major historical events. In a similar vein we would like to think that our memories of personal affronts are just as accurate. Research has shown that we are not as good at remembering as we would like to believe. We tend to embellish our memories and add perceptions from others to our own until what actually happened is quite different from the way we remember it happening. All this to say that God keeps track of our lives better than we do ourselves.

God keeps track of the insults we have suffered as well as the insults we have heaped on others. Our tears and the tears we have caused are in God’s record as well. These and other bits of information are at God’s fingertips at any moment. The good thing is that God rarely uses the information as a weapon against us, or others. God doesn’t keep track in order to keep score in the contest between us and them. God keeps account as a corrective to our faulty records. God calls us each to account for our own behavior. It is not a compare and contrast of personal behavior over and against that of another person or group so much as it is our personal behavior compared and contrasted to our memory and perception of that same activity.

The good thing for each of us is that God is quick to offer us credit for the good things and forgiveness for our lapses. Another excellent aspect of God’s love for us is that God doesn’t keep score, at least not the way we do. While God remembers our actions and inactions, the bad things do not cause God to push us away any more than the good things draw us closer to the heart of God. It is the nature of God to love us, pure and simple. We make our own choices as to how we react to the love God offers, however we do not act in ways that force God to love us any more or any less.

January 21, 2013