Psalm Meditation 1174 ¶Fourth Sunday of Advent ¶December 18, 2022 ¶Psalm 28 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+28&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶There are people in this world who can comfort us by being present with us in a time of need. They don’t say anything, they don’t do anything, they are purely present. After having been in their presence, and pouring our hearts out to them we feel as if we have been given the best advice anyone could possibly give. What we needed was a sounding board, a person to bounce a thousand ideas off of to see which of those ideas made the most sense when said out loud. We could look back and think that they did not do anything when the truth is they did just what we needed them to do. They were present. ¶The psalmist is convinced that God has turned a deaf ear to the situation. There may have been an expectation of a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder that contained the answer to all the questions in the psalmist’s current situation. The conversation continues with the psalmist asking God to destroy all the folks at the heart of this batch of concerns. However, please leave me where I am while destroying all those wicked others. Once all those distracting sinners are out of the way God can pay the psalmist some much needed attention. ¶God trusts us more than we trust ourselves. Rather than giving us the answer we want to hear, or the one we know is right while still unpleasant, God gives us the time and space to listen to our own good sense to make a decision on our own. God knows that most of us have the good sense to make our own decisions. We have minds and hearts that can sort out the good from the bad, the wise from the simple, and the workable from the aspirational. We use our God given gifts to discover the answer we really wanted God to give us without all the effort on our part. God knows what we can do, and wants us to find that out too. “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts; so I am helped, and my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.” ¶December 12, 2022 ¶LCM