Read: Psalm 4

When you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.
-Psalm 4:4b

Each night before sleep, I enter the sacred realm of prayer. I structure my prayer time using the ACTS model: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. On any given night, I dwell in each of those four rooms for as long as I need.

Some nights, I am awash with adoration, especially if I have spent time outdoors. On difficult days, I linger in the virtual confessional (a holdover from my youth in the Roman Catholic Church). Thanksgiving is my favorite room, and I usually tarry there for many minutes. If this past year has taught me anything, it is to be thankful for even the smallest of blessings. When I have spent a considerable amount of time giving thanks (which I also do all day long as the Spirit moves me), I move into the final room: Supplication.

Psalm 4 is about supplication:

Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.

David opens this psalm with a passionate plea. As one commentary noted, David isn’t throwing up a wayward prayer to the heavens here; he is asking for God’s immediate attention. David asks why the ungodly prosper (sound familiar?) and he laments about those whose ways are contrary to God’s ways (sound familiar again?) At the end of the psalm, David asks God to set him apart for God’s purpose and glory. With this assurance, he sleeps.

When sleep is about to overtake me, I close with a familiar ending I have used for many decades:

Dear Lord, I place my life into Your hands tonight; hold me fast until the morning light. Amen.

Read: Psalm 140

I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the poor and render justice to the needy. Surely, the righteous will give thanks to your Name, and the upright shall continue in your sight. I like the psalmist’s positive hope and the assurance that the LORD will make everything all right. From my early days our culture has encouraged me to look for a positive ending.
-Psalm 140:12-13

When I was a kid in grade school, there was a guaranteed good time to be had on Saturday, when our small town’s movie theater showed kid-friendly films – for nine cents! The movies were usually cowboy films starring virtuous western heroes – Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hop-a-long Cassidy, maybe The Lone Ranger with his trusty sidekick Tonto.

Whatever the storyline, some things were certain: that there would be bad guys who did bad things like rustling cows or robbing banks or being really mean and maybe even pulling out their six-shooters on virtuous folks. And our cowboy hero would, using only fair play, put a stop to their evil doings and restore peaceful order and joyful relief as he rode off into the sunset on his faithful horse… (Trigger? Silver? Champion?).

Children’s literature usually followed a similar trajectory with troubled times which ultimately came to a happy resolution. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to work? For when a TV show, movie, book, play, or story from a friend “warms the heart,” there’s a positive outcome to the dangers and troubles of life.

Maybe God agrees. Just as the psalmist must deal with terrible and cruel attacks from his/her enemies, Jesus must suffer at the hands of others. And then – the miracle. The death on the cross leads not to despair but to confidence that yes, THIS story – our story – has the happiest of endings. All happy endings echo our best story.

In the end, the psalmist rejoices, and – praise the LORD – so can we, because indeed, God will save his people.

Thank you, LORD. We believe that God is healing and restoring the world and that we are recipients of and participants in that restoration. Amen!
-Tom Worrell 

Read: Psalm 41

… O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you.
-Psalm 41:4

The psalmist is sick. He’s not just sick, but gravely ill. It’s bad enough that his enemies are gloating over his condition, but even his best friend – his bosom buddy – has turned against him. OMG! What’s interesting, though, is that the psalmist doesn’t ask for forgiveness for his sin, but rather restoration to health so he can “repay” his enemies. Ah, “revenge is a dish best served cold” (a Klingon axiom).

I suppose there is a certain satisfaction with revenge or seeing our bêtes noirs receiving their just desserts, and yet I find such an attitude quite lacking in the Spirit of Christ, who calls us to forgive and to leave judgment to God. I have found that sort of satisfaction, like sweets themselves, quite tasty in the short run, but lacking in nutritional value. It may satisfy my sweet tooth for the moment but leaves me hungry and wanting later. Jesus offers to feed us with nothing less than himself, and I have found over the years that to eat and drink at the Lord’s table has often brought me out of my need (or desire) for vengeance. God is immensely satisfying, even when I hurt.

God, you know I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed; by things done and left undone. And yet, for some strange reason, you’d rather keep me in the fold than wreak vengeance upon me. So be it. Help me to be just as gracious towards those who trouble me. For that, I certainly need your help. Amen.
-The Rev. Keith Axberg

Read: Psalm 109

May his days be few; may another seize his position.
-Psalm 109:8

When I was reading through this Psalm, I was reminded of where I had heard it before that it used to be prayed by some regarding Barack Obama. As early as 2009, verse 8 was mentioned with his name by Republicans hoping that he would be a one-term president. The problem with this is that the next verse speaks of the children of the person becoming orphans and their wife being a widow. As former senator David Perdue of Georgia found out when he caught fire for suggesting people pray the Psalm about Obama in 2016, it is not a good psalm to pray about the President of the United States… even if you don’t happen to like him.

Michelle Obama has spoken in interviews about being afraid of losing her husband or one of her children during the former president’s time in the White House, and I cannot blame her one bit. People took a psalm out of context and applied it to her family. It is an “imprecatory psalm”, meaning that it is one that calls for judgment of the psalmist’s enemies, and it has some pretty heavy implications for those who invoked it regarding the former president.

So, how should we deal with passages like this that are angry to such an extreme? We need to read them as a whole and not parcel out soundbites from them that seemingly meet our needs. Anger is a valid emotion, but it is one where action needs to be tempered to avoid crossing over into sin.

Gracious God, help us to remember that anger is an emotion, not a reason to act. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

Read: Psalm 7

O Lord my God, in you I take refuge; save me from all my pursuers and deliver me.
-Psalm 7:1

No one I know enjoys feeling powerless. This truth is as timely today as when the Psalms were being written. The images in verse 2 are of being like the prey of a lion, surely to be killed and torn apart, then dragged away with no help in sight. It would be as if one never existed.

In modern terms, there is a big trunk of feelings to unpack here! Powerlessness is one of the most difficult things for us to endure as humans, and often it is replaced with anger. Many experts suggest that the recent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, for example, illustrates what violent rage a majority losing the death grip on control might do to preserve their power. Scorched earth. Death and suffering to those who disagree. “If we can’t have it, then no one will.” Bone-chilling examples abound.

The psalmist goes on to reflect a sense of contrition and repentance, stating that if he has behaved as his pursuers, “if there is wrong in [his] hands”, then God should allow him to be overtaken. It seems to be an Old Testament understanding of the Golden Rule, going so far as to present deliverance as a gift given in return for kindness. I sense his comfort from the realization that behavior is a choice and there’s hope in doing the right (righteous) thing.

We can choose to do the same: to refuse to let negative experiences turn us into people who continue the cycles of violence—physical, emotional, spiritual—seeking revenge rather than forgiveness and peace. True peace, not a false peace offered by those who would continue to marginalize the “different” ones.

As a victim at least three times of violent crime myself, “gay-bashing” by common reference, there came a point where I was faced with three choices: harden my heart and tighten my fists to fight back punch by punch, ignore my heart, and retreat to solitary powerlessness and perpetual fear, or open my heart in forgiveness that would return life to my wounded spirit.

By the grace of God, I was able to choose the last.

O God, help us to look to the cross and desire the kind of forgiveness Jesus himself chose for those who crucified him. Amen.
-David Sloat