Deliver me from my enemies, O my God;
protect me from those who rise up against me.
Deliver me from those who work evil;
from the bloodthirsty save me.
Even now they lie in wait for my life;
the mighty stir up strife against me.
For no transgression or sin of mine, O Lord,
for no fault of mine, they run and make ready.
Rouse yourself, come to my help and see!
You, Lord God of hosts, are God of Israel.
Awake to punish all the nations;
spare none of those who treacherously plot evil.
Each evening they come back, howling like dogs
and prowling about the city.
There they are, bellowing with their mouths,
with sharp words on their lips—for “Who,” they think,
“will hear us?”
But you laugh at them, O Lord; you hold all the
nations in derision.
O my strength, I will watch for you; for you, O God,
are my fortress.
My God in his steadfast love will meet me;
my God will let me look in triumph on my enemies…
Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that
God rules over Jacob…
But I will sing of your might;
I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the
morning.
For you have been a fortress for me and a refuge in
the day of my distress.
O my strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O
God, are my fortress
the God who shows me steadfast love.
Psalm 59
Reflection
– Well, another week, another terrorist attack
dominating the news. As we have been moving through this difficult section of
the book of Psalms—the ‘gloomy 50s’, I’ve been calling it—the world has itself
moved through some gloomy times, the ‘bloodthirsty’ have indeed had their
moment lately, ‘prowling about the city’.
I found it bizarre that the visceral
response of at least some in the face of this recent attack was to lash out
with anger and contempt at those who were praying for the dead and their families.
Even as the bodies were still warm and surgeons were attending to the wounded,
even as the survivors and their families were publicly asking for prayers, some
in the media found it appropriate to sneer that ‘God can’t fix this’ (an actual
full page headline from one New York tabloid) and to tell people of faith to
shut up because ‘we are the problem’ (an actual quote from a respected senior
journalist).
Well, we won’t shut up, because God
indeed can fix this. Yes, we cannot only pray or, worse yet, mouth empty
platitudes about prayer while not even doing that. But we have to be very
clear. There is a spirit of violence and death at loose in the world right now.
Now the media does hype things up, and statistically we are still more at risk
of dying in a car accident than a terrorist attack… but nonetheless this is
real, this is happening, and it will continue to happen, a great evil of our
time.
And the greater evil yet is the fear and
anger these things stir up in people. Only a miniscule percentage of the
population will ever be killed or injured, or even have a close family member
killed or injured, by a terrorist. But there are shock waves—spiritual and
emotional—that rocket forth from these things, and let loose upon the land all
sorts of things we have to guard against. Anger, hatred, fear, anxiety,
vengefulness. And in that, vulnerability to politicians playing on those
emotions who may possibly not have our best interests at heart (not to mention
any names, but it rhymes with Funnelled Rump).
And this is what God ‘can fix’, not to
mention His consoling love for the grieving and His mercy in welcoming the
fallen into His kingdom (I don’t expect journalists to understand much about
those matters). We have to know that our security is not in electing some idiot
with bad hair who promises us he’ll take care of the whole thing with his ‘best
people’. Our security is in the Lord and the Lord alone. Yes, there are things
we have to do about ISIS, and they are not nice things, not pleasant things.
Nobody should welcome those things.
But we do not have to give in to fear,
anger, panic, unreasoned hatred, vengeful bitterness. Why? Because our safety,
our security, the sure hope of our life and the assurance of the victory of
good over evil, light over darkness, truth over falsehood, is in the Lord and
not in flesh and blood. In the final ascendancy of heaven over hell, love over
hate.
Oh, God ‘fixes’ us, all right. He affixes
us on the path of freedom and truth, the path of Gospel love and merciful care
for our brothers and sisters, out of which we can make the right choices about
our difficult world situation. To pray, and in that praying, renew our
commitment to Christ and to His Gospel, is not an empty exercise, but is the
heart of the matter, that which alone provides a path of light and peace in our
troubled war-torn world. So let’s keep praying, and thinking, and loving, and
serving, according to what Our Lord has given us and what His Spirit prompts us
to do.
Matt Walsh, a Catholic writer, wrote a post/article about this very thing at The Blaze.com ---- God has already fixed this. He gave us Jesus.
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