Today’s Scripture Reading (March 3,
2013): Psalm 61
I am a bit
of a home body. In fact, there is no place I would rather be than home. I think
my fantasy might be being able to travel around the world without leaving the comforts
and confines of my house. There are a lot of things that I would love to see –
and a lot of places that I would love to go – if I could just take the familiar
things with me. And I do not think that I am alone. That one simple idea might
be the reason why I see so many motor homes on the road everywhere I go – they
give to us the privilege of going out and seeing the world – and seeking
adventure - without ever leaving home.
David says
he call out to God “from the ends of the earth.” But for a Jew that phrase
simply could mean anywhere away from Israel. For David, anyplace on the other
side of the Jordan River would have been the ends of the earth – it was simply
away from home. And when David found himself away from home, he was in anguish.
The reality was that as long as David was separated from his home territory he
also felt separated from his God. And in a few generations David’s feeling of
anguish and separation would be shared by the entire nation of Israel as they
are forced into exile in Babylon - in those days a new generation would feel
the truth in David’s words - then it would seem that the entire nation was
being carried “to the ends of the earth.”
So David,
clutched in the anguish of being sick away from home, cries out to God for the
rock that was too high for him to climb in his own strength. For ancient
Israel, that Rock was a symbol of the love and the protection of God; it was
the image of security, serenity, and safety that David and a nation found in
the simple act of belief in the one true God.
For
Christian Church, our Rock that is higher than we can climb is Jesus. It is in
him that we find the security that we need in the world in which we have to live.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm
62
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