Give ear to my words, O Lord;
give heed to my sighing.
Listen to the sound of my
cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray.
O Lord, in the morning you
hear my voice;
in the morning I plead my
case to you, and watch.
For you are not a God who
delights in wickedness; evil will not sojourn with you.
The boastful will not stand
before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak
lies; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful.
But I, through the abundance
of your steadfast love will enter your house,
I will bow down toward your
holy temple in awe of you.
Lead me, O Lord, in your
righteousness because of my enemies;
make your way straight before
me.
For there is no truth in
their mouths; their hearts are destruction;
their throats are open
graves; they flatter with their tongues.
Make them bear their guilt, O
God; let them fall by their own counsels;
because of their many
transgressions cast them out,
for they have rebelled
against you.
But let all who take refuge
in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy.
Spread your protection over
them,
so that those who love your
name may exult in you.
For you bless the righteous,
O Lord; you cover them with favor as with a shield.
Psalm 5
Reflection
– We have here a generic ‘morning psalm’, a prayer for the break of the
day. The Church currently places it liturgically as the first psalm of Lauds on
Monday of the first week of the psalter, which in a sense gives it a certain
prominence as the pattern of morning prayer psalmody.
Do you ever wake up in the morning with a certain
sense of dread at what the day holds for you? Some people are able to wake up
with great cheerful attitudes, a song on their lips and a ready smile on their
face, but many find those first waking minutes of the day a little less than
joyous. The burdens and cares of the day, the intractable problems that
everyone’s life holds, the immediate call to serve and do and labor can all
crowd around us and make the first thoughts and sentiments of the day not the
happiest ones.
I fall somewhere in the middle on that scale, but
certainly on especially busy and heavily burdened days I can have that terrible
morning gloom, at least until my faith and, truth be told, that first cup of
coffee kick in to bring me to a better place.
But this psalm is very relevant to that. We can
hear a phrase like ‘generic morning prayer’ and start thinking of a hymn like
‘Morning Has Broken’, complete with the Cat Stevens piano accompaniment. And
the Church does call us to exultant praise of God in the morning—the second
psalm of Lauds every day is a praise psalm.
But morning is not only a time of praise, as our
own emotions testify. Morning has not only broken; some days, morning breaks
us. And the Church anticipates this, and gives us words to bring before the Lord
that correspond to that breaking, that heaviness of the first hour of the day.
‘Hear me, Lord… listen to my case… I have enemies
(or, we might say, problems)… help me with them… I bow down before you… lead
me… I will sing for joy in your presence.’
Note that the psalm finds us where many of us start
in the morning—needing help, beleaguered, overwhelmed perhaps with the
pressures of the day. But it doesn’t just leave us there, whining to God about
how hard it all is. It meets us there, and then moves us from that place—crying
out for God to hear us and help us—to a movement of bowing in reverent
submission and awe before Him, and a humble asking for Him to lead us and guide
us, show us what to do, how to do it, where to go, what to say, and so have our
day conformed to His plan, and so enter into joy and praise.
There is a whole spiritual catechesis in this
psalm, then, isn’t there? It’s OK to be grumpy in the morning, OK to start the
day feeling a little sorry for ourselves, a little weighed down by life and (probably)
not quite enough sleep. But it’s not OK to stay there, to just leave ourselves
in that lousy mood until we’re not there any more.
No, we have to bring ourselves before the Lord in
this, and make godly choices in the face of whatever our mood may be, ask God’s
help for sure with our problems, but then go deeper spiritually in the face of
them. Even the cheerful happy morning person needs to do the same thing, and
begin the day with a reverent prayer for God’s guidance and help, to seek God’s
face and beg his mercy as we begin the day. And so, as we begin this day and
this week together, let us pray for one another that we can do just that, and
so enter into the joy of God.
