“Psalm 143”

This morning I imagine many other mornings.  Mornings before this one.  Long before.  When I was an aspiring teenager, aspiring to someday be more than a teenager, attending my hometown high school in northern Minnesota.  I remember waking early in the midwinter darkness, before mom was out of bed making breakfast.  The house still silent, I would rise and look out one window into the blackness of snow-covered country before dawn, and I would look out another towards the distant lights of our little town, some ten miles of darkness between our home and it.  That's where I'd be going today.  Again today like every other day, that's where I'd be going to school.  That's where I'd be reacquainted with the world and its ways (as if one night at home would be enough for me to forget).  That's where I'd again be exposed to the potential for meanness in the words and actions of people just like me.  People almost just like me.  I had read something the night before that I thought had made me different.  Something that I sensed wrote me into a bigger story, a bigger world, a world bigger than the visible, a world more real than the touchable, smellable, audible world of which I would again this day be a part.  I read the same thing nearly every night, and sometimes I'd read it again in the morning.  It was a prayer, a prayer prayed long ago by a man who had long been dead, but who had likely been young once just like me.  I sensed he understood what I felt with the passing of each day, and the dawn of another.  I sensed he prayed to a real God, a God who heard the prayer he prayed, and listened, and answered.  So I too prayed that prayer.  I too knew that God was listening...

O Lord hear my prayer.

Listen to my cry for mercy.

In your faithfulness and righteousness,

Come to my relief.

Do not enter into judgment with your servant,

For no one living is righteous before you.

The enemy pursues me,

He crushes me to the ground.

He makes me dwell in darkness,

Like those who have long been dead.

So my spirit grows faint within me,

My heart within me is dismayed.

I remember the days of long ago;

I meditate on all your works

And consider what your hands have done.

I spread out my hands to you.

My soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

Answer me quickly, O Lord.

My spirit fails.

Do not hide your face from me,

Or I will be like those who go down to the pit.

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,

For I have put my trust in you.

Show me the way I should go,

For to you I lift up my soul.

Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord,

For I hide myself in you.

Teach me to do your will,

For you are my God.

May your good spirit lead me on level ground.

For your name’s sake, O Lord,

Preserve my life.

In your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.

In your unfailing love, silence my enemies,

Destroy all my foes,

For I am your servant.

I remember praying that part about the morning every night.  I remember knowing I would need to know God's love in the morning if I were to be brave enough to live the day.  I remember praying "Show me the way in which I should walk," every morning, with the same earnest desire to see, somehow, God leading me.  Leading me in the hallways, the classrooms, and the gymnasiums of our little school - leading me, somehow, to be a part of that bigger, invisible world.  I remember praying every morning "Teach me to do your will," with the same combination of hesitance and honest desire I had everyday, knowing, somehow, that his will might be costly to me, and that I hadn't been willing to learn this lesson, or walk in this way, the day before.  So with the dawn of each new day, as the lights of the town grew faint in the increasing brightness of the coming day, I prayed with the same desperation, "For your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life."

That was years ago.  More years than I could imagine, for the memory of it being as clear as it is this morning, it seems as though it were just yesterday.  But this morning I pray as a young father and husband.  And it is not snow-covered country I see out my window, but a residential street of the City.  And I am not so young and not so healthy as I was then.  And the world not so promising.  Still I am aspiring to be more.  I am aspiring to be a man, to be a provider, a lover, a dad.  And I'm praying the same prayer I prayed back then, again.  Only this time I pray, and somehow I know the prayer's already been answered.  This morning I imagine a young Jewish family.  I imagine the dad in this family praying this prayer early one morning, maybe every morning.  And I imagine this young husband, father, later in the day, meeting an itinerant preacher, healer, who says kindly, but boldly, "I am the way."  And I wonder if it jogs his brain like it does mine.  I wonder if he questions whether it's really that simple.  I wonder if he wonders how that works - how a man can be "the way."  But I wonder from the other side of the story, after the part where that preacher suffers miserably and dies while being crucified for, what he said, the sins of the world.  After the part where he is raised from the dead and promises the presence and power of his spirit to those who follow him. Then I hear this preacher saying the same to me this morning.  I pray, "Show me the way," and he says, "I am the way."   I pray, "Teach me the way in which I should walk," and he says, "Come, follow me."  And I am aware of how little ground I cover when I pray yet again, "Do not enter into judgment with thy servant," and this morning, I know that my prayers are answered.  My prayers are answered because of him.  My prayers are answered in Him.  "For your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life..."  Thank you Jesus.