Free Indeed
(NIV) Psalm 129
A song of ascents.
1 “They have greatly oppressed me from my youth,”
let Israel say;
2 “they have greatly oppressed me from my youth,
but they have not gained the victory over me.
3 Plowmen have plowed my back
and made their furrows long.
4 But the LORD is righteous;
he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.”
5 May all who hate Zion
be turned back in shame.
6 May they be like grass on the roof,
which withers before it can grow;
7 a reaper cannot fill his hands with it,
nor one who gathers fill his arms.
8 May those who pass by not say to them,
“The blessing of the LORD be on you;
we bless you in the name of the LORD.”
One of my favorite pictures is one Larry took in Iceland. It is a house in a country setting and the roof is grass. Not a thatched roof, but green grass. But the grass in today’s scripture is not green, indicating health, but is dying.
In this passage, the psalmist remembers the oppression of the Isaraelites but cannot forget God’s faithfulness in freeing them from their captors. But then the psalm moves into the kind of prayer that makes me more than uncomfortable. Verse 5 moves from a prayer of thanksgiving to one cursing the wicked, or an imprecatory prayer.
I have not always suffered graciously. I recall writing a poem more than twenty years ago where I said perhaps I needed a glass of wine to accompany my whine at the end of the day. Whether the pain is physical or mental, self inflicted or brought about by illness or other of life’s circumstances, it has taken me a lifetime to learn that thanking God, whatever my situation, is always the better choice.
May we be quick to remember the “goodness of God in the land of the living,” Psalm 27.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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