“O Lord, God of vengeance, God of vengeance, shine forth!” (94:1) So begins Psalm 94, but what is this vengeance? Is God’s vengeance the same as human vengeance? Psalm 94 Psalm 94 is a lament in two parts. The first fifteen verses comprise a lament of the community against evildoers who oppress the most vulnerable […]
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How deep is God’s love? How far and how wide? Psalm 89 has something to teach us about this. Steadfast Love The Hebrew word which is translated as steadfast love in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, is mercy and loving kindness in other translations. I personally prefer the term steadfast love to mercy […]
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“The rest is silence,” Hamlet’s last words – an interesting word choice for someone who never had an unspoken thought, or so it seems to me as he shared with us, the audience, all of his ruminations. He could have as easily said, “The rest is darkness.” The Prince of Denmark was no stranger to […]
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Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, a French priest and theologian who lived in the first half of the twentieth century, integrated science and theology with the spiritual exercises of Ignatius. One of the concepts of Tielhard is loving the “not yet,” the potential, the future. We love people as they are now, but also love the […]
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There is a new sense of time that can come with age: gero-transcendence, or climbing over, transcending, age. Memories of past events from childhood seem like only yesterday. They are as real now as when they first happened. You can hold the past and present together in a new way you couldn’t before. The veil […]
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Our psalm for last week of bargaining with God, gives way to depression this week with Psalm 80, the fourth stage of Kubler-Ross’ stages of dying. The Israelites are so sad that their daily bread is made up of tears, as well as their drinking water. “You have fed them with the bread of tears, […]
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Have you ever gone through a time of loss and disorientation? Sometimes these are necessary for spiritual growth. Theologian Walter Brueggemann divides the Psalms into three categories: psalms of orientation, disorientation and re-orientation. This week’s psalm, Psalm 79, is a psalm of disorientation. Psalm 79 Psalm 79 is a communal lament. The temple has been […]
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After my first third world experience, I believed in God, but questioned God’s goodness. How could a good God allow so much suffering? When I worked on my dissertation and interviewed adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I questioned God again. How could God allow innocent children to suffer so? It wasn’t the doubt of […]
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Where was God when the Twin Towers fell? When the tsunami swept away thousands of lives in Indonesia? When the woman was brutally raped and murdered? The child abused? Christians beheaded by ISIS? Where was God? Psalm 74 is a lament of the community that asks this question. Where was God when the Temple was […]
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We just celebrated Holy Week and are now in the season of Easter, a time for celebration and new life. Yet not everyone is rejoicing. The sun may be shining, flowers blooming, but those dealing with depression find little reason for celebrating. They are stuck in somber Saturday, alone with Jesus in the tomb. Psalm […]
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