Psalm 18 - One A Week Psalm Project
One A Week Psalm Project
Psalm 18
1/2
There is an energy and an amount of words and thoughts that are somewhat overwhelming this morning in this Psalm. I always imagine David as an extremely energetic extravert. This is not how I generally feel while having breakfast.
There is a lot here to pay attention to.
David is so joyful!
(Sometimes it’s a little much. Sometimes it’s a good reminder.)
It is quite an exercise in emotion - this Psalm has a lot of feelings, action, drama.
Ps 18 is such a battle cry. Sure, a battle cry with God but a battle cry nonetheless. I sometimes don’t know what to do with it.
Part of my current faith involves unlearning the colonial, white subtext placed upon the bible and so it is harder to know what to do with these types of passages.
It can be a reminder of a victorious God and an example of praise.
But in my experience any ‘persecution’ I’ve ever endured because of my faith doesn’t even remotely qualify as persecution and while I know there is real and genuine persecution of Christians and those of other faiths, my experience of ‘enemies’ are rarely actual people – at least not people who want to kill me.
In fact it feels as though the enemies within my life have mostly been from within myself – e.g. ill health, rather than other people. And ‘crushing’ fibro, while nice to think about isn’t quite the way to deal with it.
Can this be a prayer I pray for others? Is that denying a part of my faith?
Even as a metaphor the whole ‘battle’ thing is difficult and feels so counter to Jesus’ teachings. To battle ones enemies has caused so much destruction – crusades, colonialism, are just two obvious examples.
I believe God can and does ‘arm us with strength’ v39 and deliver us (v 43) but I also believe that this strength doesn’t always mean violence or even what we might hope or expect it to in the way others are treated. Are we prepared to live within that tension?
2/2
As people of faith we live constantly on a tightrope taunt with the expectations of faith and life. Is it a tension of our own making? Is the thinness of the rope only due to our unwillingness to learn the art of faith?
There is nothing economical about this Psalm, it is descriptive, repetitive and describes a God I (v8) rarely envision.
Vs 35 God could do anything God likes and yet he does stoop down and honour us by allowing and enabling and equipping us to do things we have no business getting accolades for – even if we do ‘say ‘ it’s because of God.
Creative Reflections
The page this doesn’t exactly fail but it hasn’t exactly worked either. My ‘what if’ this week didn’t quite pan out – I think primarily because of the colours. Although I do like the black on the grey.
So I re-worked the page and I don’t dislike it as much. It’s still not great but it’s better.
If I could tear it up, there’d be a few sections that would be alright. But the whole thing was a bit rushed and out of focused because I’m not especially focused on it. There are too many other things fighting for my attention.