The text: Psalm 76 – NRSV
This psalm is a powerful statement about our powerful God. As you read it you can almost feel God’s presences sweeping over the chaos of the earth, rendering it all silent and stunned. God’s appearance and God’s presence break the weapons of war, rendering armies incapable of fighting. As we discussed with Psalm 124, these metaphors of warring armies were particularly relevant to ancient Israel and may carry less meaning for us. The exercise for us could then become identifying what threats we are facing, what warring armies are approaching from the horizons of our lives, and then reading the psalm with these in mind and imagining God silencing them, rendering them inert and harmless. What is left in that silence? What does it look like to you for God to rise up in that silence and establish justice (remember Psalm 9?), to save all the oppressed of the earth. Could that even be you, your loved ones, or others that you know who are oppressed? The psalm concludes with a call to make vows to God and perform them. What response, what vows, would you make? If that isn’t an invitation to a Lenten discipline, I don’t know what is!
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