Psalm Meditation 512
Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2010

Psalm 122
1 I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD!"
2 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem--built as a city that is bound firmly together.
4 To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: "May they prosper who love you.
7 Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers."
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, "Peace be within you."
9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.
(NRSV)

In these days of contentious politics it seems odd to pray for peace in any capitol city be it Jerusalem, Washington or any other national or state capitol. One of the quickest ways to dismiss the contribution of friend or foe is to place them in a political party other than the one followed by the majority of the rest of the group. We seem not to want peace so much as we want total domination by our political party. “There will be peace when everyone finally sees that I have been right all along.”

Peace is being able to get along in the midst of disagreements. As we are able to get along together we begin to love and trust each other and find a sense of security as we realize that even, or is it especially, those with whom we disagree will come to our aid and defense in any time of need. We begin to love and trust one another with more and deeper parts of our hearts and lives knowing that we are safe in the presence of the folks we dare to love and who dare to love us with agreements and disagreements intact.

God calls us to lives of love; of seeking the best for those around us. Yes, there are cases in which to seek the best for each other means to have little or no contact even as we continue to hope for the best life possible for the other. God continues to call us deeper into relationships with folks like us and into relationships with folks who are very different from us. It seems that the wider our relationships span the more we discover that we share wants and needs even as we go about fulfilling them in differing ways.

© April 5, 2010