Psalm Meditation 963
First Sunday of Advent
December 2, 2018

Psalm 7
1 O LORD my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me,
2 or like a lion they will tear me apart; they will drag me away, with no one to rescue.
3 O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands,
4 if I have repaid my ally with harm or plundered my foe without cause,
5 then let the enemy pursue and overtake me, trample my life to the ground, and lay my soul in the dust. Selah
6 Rise up, O LORD, in your anger; lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies; awake, O my God; you have appointed a judgment.
7 Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered around you, and over it take your seat on high.
8 The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.
9 O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, but establish the righteous, you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God.
10 God is my shield, who saves the upright in heart.
11 God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.
12 If one does not repent, God will whet his sword; he has bent and strung his bow;
13 he has prepared his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts.
14 See how they conceive evil, and are pregnant with mischief, and bring forth lies.
15 They make a pit, digging it out, and fall into the hole that they have made.
16 Their mischief returns upon their own heads, and on their own heads their violence descends.
17 I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.
(NRSV)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God repaid evil with punishment immediately? Well, as long as that punishment did not include us at all. We are okay with swift retaliation against those who have done some evil against us while we appreciate God’s mercy and patience when we are involved in the evil. The difficulty is that each of us is so far from innocence whether we are able to see our guilt or not. Even though the psalmist gives God permission to dole out any deserved punishment most of us are sure that we don’t really deserve the bad things we get.

Perhaps the reason God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love is to give us plenty of time to recognize and repent of our sin. Our goal is to live out the will of God for ourselves and to draw others into that same life of faithfulness. Our methods could be seen as violence against those we want to save. Some folks believe they are doing a butterfly a favor by pulling it out of its cocoon as soon as it opens. We see ourselves as helping the process by speeding it up. It turns out that we do tremendous damage by not letting it come out at its own speed. What if our attempts to get others where we are does damage to their development?

There are evil people in the world. There are people who perform evil acts. And there are people whose actions are evil though their intention is to do good for themselves and people like them, and maybe even for those who see their actions as evil and destructive. God is willing and able to sort out actions from motives. God is willing and able to be patient with each one of us as we come to realize that our best intentions led to evil consequences and we are drawn to repentance. God is willing and able to watch over us as those who have done evil to us realize that their best intentions led to evil consequences and they are drawn to repentance

November 26, 2018
LCM