Psalm Meditation 846
Proper 18
September 4, 2016

Psalm 56
1 Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me; all day long foes oppress me;
2 my enemies trample on me all day long, for many fight against me. O Most High,
3 when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid; what can flesh do to me?
5 All day long they seek to injure my cause; all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They stir up strife, they lurk, they watch my steps. As they hoped to have my life,
7 so repay them for their crime; in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
8 You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record?
9 Then my enemies will retreat in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me.
10 In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise,
11 in God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?
12 My vows to you I must perform, O God; I will render thank offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death, and my feet from falling, so that I may walk before God in the light of life.
(NRSV)

There are a variety of ways of seeing God at work in our lives. God has been seen as a distant personality, the ‘unmoved mover’ who set the world in motion and stepped back to watch it all unfold mechanical precision. God is not seen as either for or against us; God is simply out there somewhere watching the cogs of creation mesh together as they were created to do.

God has also been seen as very hands on; fighting our battles for us and actively participating in the day to day goings on of the world. We call on God to fix or change something, and if we have been good enough it happens. God acts on behalf of those who toe the line, follow the rules and behave themselves.

And God has been our buddy, who tags along and helps us through the day by cheering us on in the good times and standing with us for moral support in the bad times. In some cases, this buddy idea gets taken to an extreme in which God supports us and encourages us to do whatever we think is the best course of action no matter what.

I am sure that each of these concepts has a bit of truth in it. There are other ways of seeing God at work in our lives that don’t come immediately to mind. As we find ourselves behaving differently around various groups of people, God is seen by each of us in way that fits who we are at the time.

“This I know, that God is for me.” This one sentence from the psalm speaks volumes. No matter how we see God, how we behave in the presence of God; God is for us. God wants us to be the very best we can be, whether we are close to or far from that goal.

August 29, 2016
LCM