Tuesday, February 26, 2008

"Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause . . ." (Psalm 43)

Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
Oh deliver me form the deceitful and unjust man!
For you are the God of my strength; why do you cast me off?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

Oh send out your light and your truth!
Let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your tabernacle.
Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise you, O God, my God.

Wht are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disqieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, the help of my countenance, and my God.

- Psalm 43

For many years, I never saw the connection between verses 1-2 and the prayer in verse 3, but lately I've had to learn about it - in life itself and and not in the Bible, which has served to confirm that others have learned it before me.

Vindication against the enemy, deliverance from the oppression of the unjust, comes in one way. I need God to send out his light and his truth, to lead me out of my own injustice and darkness into his truth. His light and his truth will lead me to safety only by showing me what's wrong with me.

I'm reminded of how Harry Truman said you can get a lot done if you don't need the credit. In like fashion, we can be delivered from the unjust if we don't need to feel sinless ourselves.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey pete. Its eddie From Chino. Could you please explain what you mean by not having to feel sinless to be deliveres.

Plus why are you smitten with obama like everyone else "here we go again thread". Is there something im not seeing that is evidently wicked about him.

3/01/2008 11:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry for the typo. I mean why are you NOT smitten with obama. At the time Im dubious about all of them.

3/01/2008 11:34 AM  
Blogger Peter Attwood said...

You answered your own question: "I'm dubious about all of them."

I would never vote under any circumstances for Hillary Clinton. There's no evidence over the years of any guiding principle but expediency and blind ambition. SHe has shown herself perfectly OK with torture, wanton aggression, and the genocidal sanctions regime approved of as such by Madeleine Albright on national television in 1996. There's no reason to think she wouldn't be as quick to trash the Constitution as Bush, since she has had no objection to anything he's done along that line.

McCain at least has some objection to torturing people, but imperial domination and wholesale slaughter of the innocent is just fine with him.

What's to like about Obama is that he might not be as bad as these other two, once he gets in office.

But even Jimmy Carter signed off on the genocide in East Timor in 1977, and he backed up Chun Doo Hwan in his massacre of the people of Kwangju in 1979. Becoming president generally brings out the most wicked proclivities of whoever attains that position - an excellent reason to pray for the occupant that he might retain some of his humanity while in that position.

3/01/2008 12:10 PM  
Blogger Peter Attwood said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/01/2008 12:11 PM  

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