![]() (1) Being sure that God is on your side, supporting your actions - well, as a private prayer describing your relief at having a survived a life or death situation - it makes sense. As Pastor James Howell writes, “Some of the thinnest, most atrocious theology we overhear in our culture is about God being on the side of … the white people, or the people, or the people of a certain religious inclination, or those who are straight, or think the Bible is literally true” and so on. “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side.” Indeed, the psalmist implores all Israel to make this claim - “if it wasn’t for the Lord being on our side against the attack of our enemies…” The idea of God taking sides - taking the side of one over the other, against the other - there aren’t many situations where that holds up to thoughtful theological scrutiny. Can you resonate with the psalmist? Have you ever felt such profound relief from danger? Have you ever felt with such clarity: If God hadn’t been with me through that, I’d be lost right now?īut, as much as I might imagine the “gut response” nature of this psalm, the authentic thanksgiving after surviving some kind of life-threatening attack, I can’t help but cringe a bit at the opening lines. Utter relief, survival against the odds, and abundant gratitude - we’re still living. God, we were birds caught in a trap, struggling, struggling, but because of you we broke free! God - you, you, were our helper, you who made everything that is. My animal studies ears perk up at the imagery and meanings here: God, we were almost prey to the teeth of our hungry enemies, predators. God, without you on our side, we’d be dead right now! We were attacked, about to be eaten up, about to be drowned in the flood waters, the strength of our enemies. Wow - God - if you hadn’t been on our side, we wouldn’t have survived. I read in it a profound sense of relief, immediately after a danger has passed. The Psalm we’re looking at today gives me that sense. They’re written from the trenches of war and violence, from the depths of grief, from the heights of joy, from the moment of the realization of great love, from our loneliest moments. They read almost like they’re coming from the moment of crisis, or from seconds after the worst of something has passed. Sometimes the Psalms strike me as prayers like that. Where are you? Did you forget about me? Thank you. In fact, I believed - believe - God wants that. They could cry out: God, please, please, please, spare my child. They could pray to God exactly what was on their hearts, even if they thought it was somehow selfish. But I really did want to let them know that they didn’t have to edit their prayer for God. I was learning, trying very hard not to tell people what to do and how to feel in a misguided attempt to “fix” things for people. ![]() ![]() Their willingness to talk to a 23 year-old chaplain intern about their ailing infant was a sacred gift to me that I didn’t take lightly. I was still learning how to best listen and how to respond when people are inviting you to share in their pain in such profound ways. They didn’t think they could ask God for that, but that they could only pray for God’s will to be done, even if “God’s will” turned out to be that their child would die. I remember them talking to me about praying to God and that they wanted to just pray for God to save their baby, heal their baby, but.they wouldn’t let themselves pray for that. And I still remember a conversation with one family, whose newborn was fighting for his life. Years ago I took a unit of CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education, and I worked in the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, of a local hospital.
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