Psalm Meditation 967
First Sunday After Christmas
December 30, 2018

Psalm 55
1 Give ear to my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication.
2 Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in my complaint. I am distraught
3 by the noise of the enemy, because of the clamor of the wicked. For they bring trouble upon me, and in anger they cherish enmity against me.
4 My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.
6 And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
8 I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.”
9 Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech; for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it;
11 ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace.
12 It is not enemies who taunt me—I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—I could hide from them.
13 But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend,
14 with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God with the throng.
15 Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.
16 But I call upon God, and the LORD will save me.
17 Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he will hear my voice.
18 He will redeem me unharmed from the battle that I wage, for many are arrayed against me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old, Selah will hear, and will humble them—because they do not change, and do not fear God.
20 My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me
21 with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords.
22 Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.
23 But you, O God, will cast them down into the lowest pit; the bloodthirsty and treacherous shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.
(NRSV)

Sometimes friends have a falling out that turns them against each other. Sometimes a friend turns into an enemy or adversary for reasons unknown to us. It may be something we said or did, and it may be something someone else said about us that turns a friend away. We wonder what we could have done to cause or contribute to this turn of events. Even if we do not know the cause, the friendship is obviously at an end. And it is deeply painful to lose a friend, more so to gain an enemy. Not only is there the loss of friendship, there is also an adversary who has intimate knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses.

Sometimes people befriend us for the sole purpose of getting that intimate knowledge of us. They want to hear our innermost secrets so they can get to know us quickly and deeply. When they feel they have enough information, the relationship ends and we have lost a friend, though they have not. It makes us feel hurt and used. The pain may last longer than that of a genuine broken friendship because of the embarrassment we feel at not being more perceptive.

God does work in our lives. People who make a habit of turning on friends eventually find themselves with no friends at all. Those they betrayed and those to whom they betrayed old friends will leave them to themselves. God sustains us in times of trial and betrayal and allows us to use what we have learned to sustain others as they go through the trial of loss and betrayal. God is with us.

December 24, 2018
LCM