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lectio/ps.6/can’t keep up with these guys
Second or third morning on psalm 6: I weary in my sighing/I make my bed swim every night/ with my tears I water my couch/From vexation my eye becomes dim/is worn out because of all my foes/Turn from me all you wrongdoers/for the Lord hears the sound of my weeping (7-9). Last night Ebony said it well, reflecting on the model of daily prayer she inherited: “I was expected to pray with weeping and screaming and bleeding, and I just didn’t have the energy for that on a daily basis.” Sometimes you just can’t keep up with these psalmists in the intensity department….But you can learn from them. Learning this morning: how willing they are to bring their exaggerations into the presence of God. How little energy the expend on expressing themselves accurately. The weeping feels to them like a flood? That’s good enough for them; a flood it is.
I, we all, I suppose, at least many I know who are facing sorrows, may or may not be able to get them out, cry the good cry, release any floods. We’ve got these sorrows, I have mine, that exceed my energy level at the moment–dogs you don’t want to start barking. So this morning it occurred to pray, the Lord will hear my non-weeping. Followed by a time of awareness of what I was non-weeping over. That is to say an awareness of the psalmist’s Lord looking at what that is, knowing it for what it is, even when I don’t have the wherewithal to know it, or to feel it. A strange kind of catharsis without the fireworks because the fuses are damp.
