Psalm Meditation 1331 ¶Fourth Sunday of Advent ¶December 21, 2025 ¶Psalm 43 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2043&version=NRSVUE ¶When things go sideways in our lives our first thought can be to decide who is to blame and why it is someone besides me. It is all those other people who are out to get me anyway who caused this particular calamity. I do not deserve to be treated this way and God let me down by not protecting me from this trial. ¶If only God were watching out for me more carefully this would have happened to someone who deserved it and not to me. ‘God, now that you have let this happen to me, I am giving you this opportunity to fix it by leading me back into your gracious presence where I can go to your altar and praise you for welcoming me back to your presence where I belong. ¶After going through the blaming part, we get to where it isn’t as important to lay blame as it is to remember that God is with us to quiet our spirits and restore our faith. Even in the worst of situations we see that God is with us, to share our burdens and give us hope as we move into the future with the assurance of God’s abiding presence in our lives. ¶December 15, 2025 ¶LCM

Psalm Meditation 1171 ¶First Sunday of Advent ¶November 27, 2022 ¶Psalm 43 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+43&version=NRSVUE (NRSV) ¶One of my psychologist friends told me that many of the things that upset us most about the people around us are traits and behaviors that are present in us even though we deny them. We see it in people who are in the public eye as they speak out against an activity or lifestyle only to have it discovered that they are active participants in the practice they criticize so vocally. They hate it within themselves and find it easier to rail against those who are more public in their practice than to make the effort to change themselves by claiming the life they live in secret. ¶The psalmist asks for deliverance from those who are deceitful and unjust. Without judging the psalmist, I wonder how many of us have taken a stand against something of which we too are guilty. Or do we see ourselves as accepting of all people, with the exception of the races and types of people who offend or frighten us? We say we take refuge in God while we mean that we hide behind God. We quote Scripture out of context to justify our beliefs and practices that fly in the face of the sovereignty of God and the sacred worth of others. ¶The psalmist cries out for the light and truth of God. It is a good thing to do. It helps if we will include ourselves in the number we hope to receive that light and truth. As the light and truth of God illuminate us we find ourselves moving closer to the holy hill, the dwelling place of God. If we get to the place in which we feel that we have received all the light and truth we will ever need, rest assured that we are more deeply in need of light and truth than ever. ¶November 25, 2022 ¶LCM

Psalm Meditation 1087 Third Sunday of Easter April 18, 2021 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 a victim mindset nothing is my fault, it is all those others who are out to get me for no reason. This is also true for people who really are victims so it is difficult to figure out for myself whether I am being victimized or playing the victim. Either way, I feel abandoned and deserted by everyone around me, except by those who are out to get me. In the psalmist’s case, even God has walked away. Since God does not abandon anyone, there must be something else going on. God backs away when I need to learn that I can do something on my own. It may be something I have always depended on God to do for me, or it may be something that I feel is beyond me, that God knows I am ready to do. God will also back away when I am about to do something silly or dangerous, in hopes that I too will back away from my current course of action. Whether I am a victim or playing victim, I can turn to God and the people of God for help and comfort. The great thing about the people of God is that there is always someone who will support me through my trials and triumphs. When I find the one who will tell me the truth, even when it is painful, I know I have found the one I need in that moment, and probably longer. “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.” April 12, 2021 LCM

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

Psalm Meditation 726
Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 18, 2014

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)

There are folks who go into a grief experience and never come out of it. They spend the rest of their lives rehearsing, rehashing and wallowing in the grief they have experienced. It is as if the continual grieving is the only way they feel they can adequately memorialize those for whom they grieve. They walk about mournfully as if grief were an obligation to perform rather than a process to work through.

There are other folks who experience grief as a process, a series of steps, leaps and lunges, both forward and backward, that leads to a deeper and renewed sense of life. These folks honor those for whom they grieve by living. They carry their memories with them, rather than being stuck in a remembered past. The psalmist is one of these folks. Grieved by oppression, there is a desire for the light and truth of God to lead a way through the mourning to a sense of joy.

My experience is that the presence of God makes the grief and mourning bearable. Knowing that God is with us gives us hope that leads to joy, praise and a sense of peace. The presence of God, and God present in the people of God, gives us help and hope that leads out of mourning into praise.

May 12, 2014