Psalm Meditation 729
Pentecost
June 8, 2014

Psalm 143
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness; answer me in your righteousness.
2 Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
3 For the enemy has pursued me, crushing my life to the ground, making me sit in darkness like those long dead.
4 Therefore my spirit faints within me; my heart within me is appalled.
5 I remember the days of old, I think about all your deeds, I meditate on the works of your hands.
6 I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah
7 Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me, or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.
8 Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust.
Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
9 Save me, O LORD, from my enemies; I have fled to you for refuge.
10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on a level path.
11 For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life. In your righteousness bring me out of trouble.
12 In your steadfast love cut off my enemies, and destroy all my adversaries, for I am your servant.
(NRSV)

In the midst of energy draining, soul crushing situations it is hard to gather the strength for something as simple as asking for help. The psalmist is aware that things are getting dire enough to siphon off the very last ounce of energy and turns to God for help. Was there no one else available to ask earlier, did this come on suddenly leaving no time to ask another, or was this a situation so desperate that only God could intervene successfully? The psalmist lived in a culture much more community oriented than our American culture of the rugged individual. Asking the community to help held no shame and would have been expected.

There can be a lot of baggage in asking another for help. Since we are not as altruistic as we might like, there are favors to be done in return for the help others give. It may have been more or less pronounced in the time of the psalmist, however there would have been some price to pay for the help of another person. As we fear we may not even have the energy to pull ourselves out, let alone repay the kindness of others, it is good to be able to turn to God. The goodness of God has already outshone anything we might be able to do in return that we can ask for help with the awareness of God’s steadfast love for us in spite of our inability to even come close to being able to repay God’s favor in our lives.

Yes, it would be wonderful to be able to ask for and receive help from others without a sense of obligation to them. It would be nice if we could give help without leaving the other person feeling obligated. In some relationships there is that steadfast love that doesn’t keep score, however those are rare and precious and exist because we don’t take advantage of them or take them for granted. The steadfast love of God, chesed in Hebrew, agape’ in Greek, is available to us in any and every situation of our lives. God simply loves us. God is grateful when we return that love to the best of our ability, and mostly God loves us beyond our ability to understand.

June 1, 2014