Psalm Meditation 1117 ¶ Proper 28 ¶November 14, 2021 ¶Psalm 48 1 Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. His holy mountain, 2 beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King. 3 Within its citadels God has shown himself a sure defense. 4 Then the kings assembled, they came on together. 5 As soon as they saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic, they took to flight; 6 trembling took hold of them there, pains as of a woman in labor, 7 as when an east wind shatters the ships of Tarshish. 8 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God, which God establishes forever. Selah 9 We ponder your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple. 10 Your name, O God, like your praise, reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with victory. 11 Let Mount Zion be glad, let the towns of Judah rejoice because of your judgments. 12 Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, 13 consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation 14 that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide forever. (NRSV) ¶I tend to see my friends in the best possible light, and my enemies and adversaries in the worst possible light. All this without having any idea what is going on in the heads and hearts of either. When I talk to my friends I discover that they do not see themselves as having led the charmed and abundantly blessed lives that I see looking in from the outside. And when enemies have become friends and I am able to talk to them about the past, I discover that their motives were often not as evil as I believed them to be. ¶When I read the verses about the warlike approach of enemy rulers, it makes me wonder if they ran away in fear of the city of Zion or if they left for other reasons. If these enemies had no fear of God, however foolish that may be, they may have looked on the city of Zion as one not worth the time and energy to conquer. It is also possible that this group of rulers was on the way to a war council to which Zion was not invited and the group was passing by with no notice of Jerusalem at all. Since we don’t know anything about them, we are left to wonder if these rulers were afraid, unconcerned, or unimpressed. The view of the psalmist is all the information we have. ¶When we are quick to assume what is going on in the hearts and minds of those around us it will be good to take a moment to wonder how we could possibly know why a person acted the way they did. We do well to content ourselves with knowing our own thoughts and motives, our own likes and dislikes, our own definition of wins and losses. We can join the psalmist in the walk about of Zion, by whatever name we know our city, in order to find our own reasons to love and treasure the place we hold dear. ¶November 10, 2021 ¶LCM