Psalm 109: Transparent to the Lord

…but I am a man of prayer.  Psalm 109:4b

This prayer of David is amazingly perplexing.  In it, he pleads with God against an enemy and his pleading is disturbingly merciless juxtaposed against the mercy and favor he asks of God.   He directly asks God to judge his enemy including his family, past, present and future with extreme prejudice.  It is hard to believe this is coming from David.  If he were a Christian in our prayer group praying this way, I daresay most would take him aside and counsel him that this was most unbecoming.

 

A few days ago, I made a professional mistake.  I made a casual off-hand remark to my manager about some actions that some senior management at my work were making and she rebuked me for it later.

 

She did this in love because she knows that this type of remark would be career limiting.  As we dialoged about it, I proposed several ideas to justify this event – such as me knowing her less formally so I wasn’t putting on the face I would with others and that we were talking privately – not publicly.  Also, that I was not being precise in my language – I was frustrated by a situation and just expressing that.

 

But in thinking about it later, it wasn’t that simple.  The reality is that this is a habit with me.   It is unreasonable to think that others could translate my inner most fears and ramblings.  It is a lack of faith to blurt my fears out in such a way.  A man of prayer could trust these to God instead and that is what David is doing here.  He knows God is just enough and wise enough so David can take his raw complaint there instead of raging in public like a fool.  Lord, teach me to bring these thoughts before you.

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