Psalm Meditation 855
Proper 27 or All Saint’s Sunday
November 6, 2016

Psalm 43
1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people;
from those who are deceitful and unjust deliver me!
2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you cast me off?
Why must I walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
(NRSV)

In the midst of the darkest dark there comes a glimmer of hope, an inkling that this particular darkness will not last forever. It starts as a hint of light in the corner of the eye. It may disappear for a moment, to return later, a little brighter and easier to pick out of the darkness. It may fade and return multiple times, staying longer and glowing more consistently as time goes by. At some point the glimmer becomes a glow and the glow becomes a light. The light carries hope and warmth in its beams.

Around the time the faintest glimmer appears there is a sense that I am not alone, there are others and there is another. The others are those who suffer with me and those who would trade places and suffer for me if they possibly could. The singular other is the presence of God. God is the one who can withstand my anger and blaming, the intensity of my sadness and the despair that threatens to undo me completely. God is the one who stands above the fray and in the midst of it, all at the same time. The immensity of the presence of God is a reminder that I am in the presence of one who help me up each time I fall.

And then one day, almost unbidden, music returns. A song rises from my heart and lifts my voice with it. It is tentative at first. It is never insistent, it sits on the edge of my life until I am ready to let it rise out of me. A joy returns tinged in sadness, it is joy nonetheless.

October 31, 2016
LCM