Psalm Meditation 678
Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time
June 16, 2013

Psalm 60
1 O God, you have rejected us, broken our defenses; you have been angry; now restore us!
2 You have caused the land to quake; you have torn it open; repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
3 You have made your people suffer hard things; you have given us wine to drink that made us reel.
4 You have set up a banner for those who fear you, to rally to it out of bowshot. Selah
5 Give victory with your right hand, and answer us, so that those whom you love may be rescued.
6 God has promised in his sanctuary: “With exultation I will divide up Shechem, and portion out the Vale of Succoth.
7 Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet; Judah is my scepter.
8 Moab is my washbasin; on Edom I hurl my shoe; over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
9 Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?
10 Have you not rejected us, O God? You do not go out, O God, with our armies.
11 O grant us help against the foe, for human help is worthless.
12 With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes.
(NRSV)

I have been wondering which is the more accurate description of the sense of abandonment we feel outside the presence of God. Does God actually walk away from us, reject us, as was the thinking of the psalmist and folks of that age, or do we walk away from God and at some point feel the distance between us? The best answer seems to be that it doesn’t matter who walks away, the sense of distance, rejection and abandonment are the same. And even if it is God who walks away, it is due to some infidelity to God on our part.

Whoever it is who walked away, God is more than ready to reconnect in the relationship when we decide it is what we want. Just as God does not force us into the relationship in the first place, God does not force us to return to a relationship when it has been torn open. While the psalmist is concerned over a military conflict, asking God to return to the battle, we are more often concerned with the day to day conflicts between right and wrong.

If only the battles over right and wrong had a clear delineation of which is which. In our daily conflicts there are compelling yet competing priorities on every side. We each believe our own side has the proper priorities and worldview or we would not have chosen that side in the first place. In any case, it is important to align ourselves with the priorities we believe come from God and to have a willingness to change our hearts and minds as we sense that we may have misunderstood what it is that is important to God.

June 10, 2013