Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 3-087 Sunday 04 May 2003

Psalms on Sundays Reading: Psalm 7 - AN APPEAL FOR JUSTICE

Would you have the courage to be a prophet? 'Lord, may I speak your word boldly today.'

Don't reach for the Bible dictionary - there isn't an account of Cush (referred to in the psalm's preface) elsewhere in the Old Testament, though he could have been involved in Absalom's rebellion, and Benjamin, as Saul's tribe, contained some of David's most vociferous enemies. (2 Sam 16:5-8)

The psalm comes out of a moment when David was on the run from his enemies, accused of wrongdoing, and it comes to us as a comfort and a resource when we feel unfairly harassed. Persecution often hides behind the language of justice, however perverted. Faced with exorbitant power it may be difficult to be sure of the self- destructive tendencies of evil (vs 14-16).

Going round the deeply disturbing Holocaust exhibition in the Imperial War Museum in London early in summer 2002, it came home to me again. Look at the mesmerising films of the Nuremburg rallies, the overwhelming confidence of that mass movement and its early successes - who would guess that they were digging a big enough pit to fall into, or that God's flaming arrows were in preparation? How few and yet how precise the Christian prophetic voices against it were.

Whatever political or spiritual crisis afflicts our world today, let us pray for similar insight and bravery. David is not entirely confident in the righteousness of his own position, but he is entirely confident in God's justice. And so he has a double prayer: first, riskily, that God would give strength to his enemies if he is in the wrong (vs 3-5); then the appeal to God's justice if he's right, not as an abstract quality but an activity, is relentless. It shows how far God's justice reaches, from the field of battle to the workings of the heart, from the public assemblies of the people to questions of personal integrity.

Draw up a list of how many areas of personal local, national and international life could change if God's idea of justice was taken seriously.

- Roger Pooley

Copyright Scripture Union, 2003, Encounter with God

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