Take It, Especially the Big Day, to the Lord in Prayer

 Our passage for Sunday is Psalm 17: 1-9,

 ¹ Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry; give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit. ² From you let my vindication come; let your eyes see the right.

³ If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress.
⁴ As for what others do, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent. ⁵ My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped.

⁶ I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me; hear my words. ⁷ Wondrously show your steadfast love, O savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand.

⁸ Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings, ⁹ from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me.

          It is a prayer of David.  It is not the entire psalm but carries us through the first ‘stanza’ (as best we can tell that the Psalms have 'stanzas').  We do not have context for this prayer, unlike Psalm 3.  Psalm 3 marks David's plea to the Lord when fleeing from Absalom.  But even without context, we have David's heart open to us. 

          It is a psalm of preparation.  David is preparing for something and is coming before the Lord to clear the path.  He begins with “hear a just cause”.  

            But he recognizes a world of danger.  He concludes with “guard me…, hide me…from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me.”  It may be a time of war for King David.  Or maybe David was simply looking around and seeing with clear eyes something that has not changed to our time.  That the wicked and deadly enemies continue to surround us.  Not a conspiracy against us, but random acts, muggings, carjackings, home invasions, violent moments that strike without rhyme or reason.  Bad people doing bad things.  It simply happens, despite all our precautions.  

And it is only one verse in the whole prayer, one piece of daily life.  It is side by side with David calling on God’s wondrous love, of laying open his own heart before the Lord that God will not find deception there.  Life in a sinful world consists of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and David lifts all in prayer.  

As I read these words as part of our lectionary passages, what struck me is that this is an uncomplicated, open and honest, direct prayer to God in advance of our Big Day.  David speaks of a ‘just cause’, something important to his heart and life.  I do not know if I would characterize a Sunday to Rekindle the Gifts of God as a ‘just cause’, but it is certainly a cause integral to our work in the Kingdom of God.

So that’s the ‘in’.  This prayer of David; one we speak 3000 years after David wrote it; a prayer integrated-by God’s inspiration-into the Songbook (the Book of Psalms) of the Bible of Jesus (our OT).  Words that speak from the heart, acknowledge the reality of a world of sin, and call for a world made better in the love and power of God.

This prayer was answered incarnately (in the flesh) a millennium later when David’s heir and descendant, our Lord Jesus, came to us.  In Him, it is a prayer that continues to be answered to this day.

 

Peace,

Pastor Pete