Psalms of Lament and Hope – Prayerful Tuesday

The only gift I have to offer this week is my sorrow for Paris, Beirut, Syria, Iraq, and all of us.  So I offer the Psalms I go to when I am in the midst of sorrow and pain.  May your hearts be comforted by the words of the psalmist and may you find solace knowing others cry with you.

Psalm 36:1-4 (MSG)
A David Psalm
^1-4 The God-rebel tunes in to sedition—
all ears, eager to sin.
He has no regard for God,
he stands insolent before him.
He has smooth-talked himself
into believing
That his evil
will never be noticed.
Words gutter from his mouth,
dishwater dirty.
Can’t remember when he
did anything decent.
Every time he goes to bed,
he fathers another evil plot.
When he’s loose on the streets,
nobody’s safe.
He plays with fire
and doesn’t care who gets burned.

Psalm 42 (NRSV)

¹As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
²My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
³My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me continually,
“Where is your God?”
⁴These things I remember, as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng, and led them in procession
to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
a multitude keeping festival.
⁵Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help
⁶and my God. My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan
and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
⁷Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
⁸By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
⁹I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?”
¹⁰As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
¹¹Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

Ruth Jewell, ©November 17, 2015