Psalm Meditation 1194 ¶Fifth Sunday of Easter ¶May 7, 2023 ¶Psalm 60 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+60&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶It will be a good day when we realize that God has a different agenda than many of us have. We want God to do our bidding, to get rid of our enemies, to punish the folks with whom we disagree, and to make us victorious over the whole world. One of the difficulties is that there are multiple countries and cultures who are praying that God will put them in first place among the peoples of the earth. As long as we expect to be in first place because we are people of God, we can’t appreciate what God is actually calling us to do and be. ¶God calls us to be servants of those around us. This does not mean we let folks walk over us, it means we serve willingly, humbly, and wholeheartedly. God loves us because that is the nature of God. As with anyone, God’s love is not something we can earn. God loves us by choice, rather than because we have completed the proper number of good deeds in the allotted amount of time. A person can, perhaps, drive people away by their actions, however, no one can make anyone stop loving them. ¶When we read a psalm such as this one, let it serve as a reminder that what we want is not the same as what God wants for us. We can ask God to ride ahead and kill all the folks who annoy us and stand against us, but that does not mean that God will cater to our whims, especially when those whims involve the defeat and destruction of another person or group of those loved by God. God would much rather we learn to live together, with our differences intact, than that we destroy each other for the sake of ‘winning.’ ¶May 1, 2023 ¶LCM