He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment. – Psalm 7:14

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 6, 2013): Psalm 7

I practice responses. I know how stupid that is, but it seems to happen almost automatically. If I know that I am having a meeting with someone, and especially if I am anticipating a stressful meeting, then I rehearse what it is that I am expecting them to say and how it is that I want to respond. But I have to admit that I do not remember a meeting that went exactly according to plan. In fact, I can remember meetings where the person that I was with did not bring up their expected objection, but I had practiced the meeting for so long that I brought it up – and then immediately kicked myself for doing it. But I know that the reason I brought it up was because I had already practiced the meeting and I wanted a chance to give my response. So practice ended up being detrimental to my actions.

I love the imagery used in this Psalm, although I think I would reorder the list. To me, it makes more sense to say that “He who conceives trouble is pregnant with evil and gives birth to disillusionment.” (I think that conception should come before the pregnancy.) But I understand the premise because it has been a reality in my life. I know the times that I have practiced for trouble (the conception), but the result has never been what I thought it would be. The result was, at least on some level - evil. The conception of trouble has led me down paths that I really had no intention of going down – paths that were not good which is essentially the definition of evil. And the result has been that I was the one who ended up being disillusioned because my expectations - the ones that I thought was going to be the outcome when I practiced the situation – were never being met.

So David gives us this concrete advice, if you do not want to be disillusioned, stop conceiving of trouble. And the message that I hear is that I need to stop expecting trouble – stop practicing for those moments when I think that trouble is going to come. Because when I conceive of trouble, I invite evil into my life. When I practice for situations that have not yet happened, I am travelling down a path that I would rather not go down. But because I have conceived and practiced it, I am actually increasing my chances of having to really confront that trouble – often because I am the one that opens the door to it – and the result will be evil. And evil will destroy all of the things that I have hoped for and the expectations that I have for myself and for the church of which I am a part – I will be disillusioned.

So I need to work at not practicing, but that is hard because it has happened so often that it has become a habit. But sometimes habits just need to be broken. Go and break them.     

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 8