Today's Meditation - Tuesday, August 11, 2020

 Today's Meditation

Read Psalm 102

¹Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you.

²Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call.

³For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace.

⁴My heart is stricken and withered like grass; I am too wasted to eat my bread.

⁵Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my skin.

⁶I am like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places.

⁷I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.

⁸All day long my enemies taunt me; those who deride me use my name for a curse.

⁹For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink,

¹⁰because of your indignation and anger; for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.

¹¹My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

¹²But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever; your name endures to all generations.

¹³You will rise up and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to favor it; the appointed time has come.

¹⁴For your servants hold its stones dear, and have pity on its dust.

¹⁵The nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth your glory.

¹⁶For the Lord will build up Zion; he will appear in his glory.

¹⁷He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.

¹⁸Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:

¹⁹that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,

²⁰to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die;

²¹so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem,

²²when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

²³He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days.

²⁴“O my God,” I say, “do not take me away at the mid-point of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations.”

²⁵Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

²⁶They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away;

²⁷but you are the same, and your years have no end.

²⁸The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

What I find most intriguing about this passage is the tension it holds throughout the psalm of the now, the eternal, and the "not yet".  The Psalmist cries out to God for his current state of affairs.  "Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to You."  The poetry and symbolism are heavy.  His "days pass away like smoke" - they are ethereal and without substance and yet his "bones burn like a furnace" - quite the opposite.  He is "too wasted to eat my bread" and at the same time he "eats ashes like bread".  He cannot eat what gives him sustenance for future strength, but rather he eats the ashes of the past, what is dead and gone, wallowing in what used to be.  He is "like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places".  Owls are nocturnal animals, so he stays awake all night obsessed with his difficulties and problems and cannot sleep.

Then the psalm moves into the eternal, praising God for enduring all the generations of the past, "But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever; your name endures to all generations."  He goes on to talk about what God and the people of God will do; the nations will fear the name of the Lord and the Lord will build up Zion.

Then the psalm moves into the "not yet", "Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord, that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die; so that the name of the Lord my be declared in Zion."

It moves back into the now in verse 23, "He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days."

Then back again into the eternal in verse 25, "Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands."

And finally ends in the "not yet"in verse 28, "The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence."

Why is this important, the flow between these three; the now, the eternal, and the "not yet"?  I think it is important to keep these three perspectives in constant view of one another.  We sometimes allow the now to overshadow all that has been done in the past, all that will come in the future.  We sometimes get trapped in the now and allow it to overwhelm us.  We need to remember that what we choose now affects the near future, it affects the next generations.  But we can't get caught in a grip of inaction and indecision because there is also the long history of generations and the longer history of eternity.  God is Lord of it all; the now, the "not yet", and eternity.

Lord of All