A David Psalm, when he outwitted Abimelech and got away. (Psalm 34)
I bless God every chance I get;
my lungs expand with his praise.
I live and breathe God;
if things aren't going well, hear this and be happy:
Join me in spreading the news;
together let's get the word out.
God met me more than halfway,
and freed me from my anxious fears.
Look at him; give him your warmest smile.
Never hide your feelings from him.
When I was desperate, I called out,
and God got me out of a tight spot.
God's angels set up a circle
of protection around us while we pray.
Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes
and see how good God is.
Blessed are you who run to him.
Worship God if you want the best;
Worship opens doors to all his goodness.
Do you think of the Christian life as something that lifts you out of the realm of
the mundane into something more majestic? If so, you're wishing in the wrong direction.
The Christian faith draws us deeper into the stuff of creation: bodies, money, emotions,
and relationships.
Some of the stuff we see is awful. And some of the stuff we feel is painful.
But it is precisely there, in the awfulness and painfulness of life, that we discover something that
transcends these things. In Psalm 34:18, the psalmist says,
"If your heart is broken, you'll find God right there''.
The times the psalmist lived in were not all that different from our own times.
Back then, as now, there was a pseudo-theology that explained misfortune as a sign
of divine punishment, whether the punishment was sickness, poverty, disability, or death.
The sufferer's recourse was either to avoid the gods or to strike a bargain with them
so they would back off.
The ministry of Jesus was the great refutation of this. He deliberately singled out
every kind of trouble and initiated a healing ministry to the sick, the guilty,
the hungry, and even the dead. The single qualification for being eligible for God's help
is that we be in trouble. The reason we're in trouble doesn't matter, whether it's
our own fault or someone else's. What matters is that God's right there in the midst
of our troubles, stooping to pick up the pieces of our broken hearts and put them
back together.
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