The psalms are almost always written in some form of a distress or a challenging situation or
something that is um is bringing out the need to break to pray in a forceful or strong strident way. There are some that are just ceremonial psalms, but this one and many others are written in this situation of distress.
I wonder if today if the psalm were written today if it might not be a person crying out because they're experiencing pain and loss because they feel isolated and alone and maybe put aside.
I’m reading a lot about social isolation and how difficult it is, especially if we spend a lot of time in sort of not in person or real face-to-face conversation with people. If we're getting all our social interaction through the computer how dangerous and difficult that is for us. We often feel put aside; we often feel trampled under the feet of arrogant people. This psalm reminds us that our identity is more than what we put online. It's more than what we let people know.
often, it's even more than what people can see. our identity was given to us in the waters of baptism.
This psalm reminds us that when we drink from God's river, that river is pure joy. and so how do we access that river? How do we see that river as truth? how do we know our identity is claimed by god and not by what people assign us or how people other people define us?
I think one of those ways one of the most important ways is to remember that we have been baptized. That is our real identity. that is who we really are - we are a child of God beloved claimed and free.
It doesn't always feel nice to have people judge us or to have people tell us who we are or to be pushed aside “by the feet of the arrogant” as the psalm puts it. If we can remember that we are not defined by those things but instead defined by the love of a god who is as big as the mountains, whose love is as big as the sky.
That is our real identity. That is who we really are. if we can wake up every day and remember
that we've been baptized, that we are claimed, and we are named by god and not by the world and not by our friends and not by our enemies and not by anything else, but those things.
Wouldn't that be amazing?
When we then can be free.
God bless.
you