⁵ Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
    our God is merciful.
⁶ The Lord protects the simple;
    when I was brought low, he saved me.
⁷ Return, O my soul, to your rest,
    for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

⁸ For you have delivered my soul from death,
    my eyes from tears,
    my feet from stumbling.
⁹ I walk before the Lord
    in the land of the living.
¹⁰ I kept my faith, even when I said,
    “I am greatly afflicted”;
¹¹ I said in my consternation,
    “Everyone is a liar.”

¹² What shall I return to the Lord
    for all his bounty to me?
¹³ I will lift up the cup of salvation
    and call on the name of the Lord,
¹⁴ I will pay my vows to the Lord
    in the presence of all his people.
¹⁵ Precious in the sight of the Lord
    is the death of his faithful ones.
¹⁶ O Lord, I am your servant;
    I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.
    You have loosed my bonds.
¹⁷ I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
    and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁸ I will pay my vows to the Lord
    in the presence of all his people,
¹⁹ in the courts of the house of the Lord,
    in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord!

⁶ We heard of it in Ephrathah;
    we found it in the fields of Jaar.
⁷ “Let us go to his dwelling place;
    let us worship at his footstool.”

⁸ Rise up, O Lord, and go to your resting place,
    you and the ark of your might.
⁹ Let your priests be clothed with righteousness,
    and let your faithful shout for joy.
¹⁰ For your servant David’s sake
    do not turn away the face of your anointed one.

¹¹ The Lord swore to David a sure oath
    from which he will not turn back:
“One of the sons of your body
    I will set on your throne.
¹² If your sons keep my covenant
    and my decrees that I shall teach them,
their sons also, forevermore,
    shall sit on your throne.”

¹³ For the Lord has chosen Zion;
he has desired it for his habitation:
¹⁴ “This is my resting place forever;
here I will reside, for I have desired it.
¹⁵ I will abundantly bless its provisions;
I will satisfy its poor with bread.
¹⁶ Its priests I will clothe with salvation,
and its faithful will shout for joy.
¹⁷ There I will cause a horn to sprout up for David;
I have prepared a lamp for my anointed one.
¹⁸ His enemies I will clothe with disgrace,
but on him, his crown will gleam.

³ Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortals, in whom there is no help.
⁴ When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
    on that very day their plans perish.

⁵ Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the Lord their God,
⁶ who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
⁷     who executes justice for the oppressed;
    who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
⁸     the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the Lord loves the righteous.
⁹ The Lord watches over the strangers;
    he upholds the orphan and the widow,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

¹⁰ The Lord will reign forever,
    your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord!

Prayer:
Because of your attention and blessing, we have so much to be thankful for.  Today we thank you for your Son whom you sent to teach us your ways and bring us closer to you and one another.

We thank you for the love we receive and the love we share…
for the loving support of friends and family…
for the opportunity to live today serving your purpose….

We pray for those who are in particular need today, ourselves and others.  We pray  for
the church as we work for peace between individuals and groups…
those who suffer from unjust laws and systems…
those who write laws and enforce laws….
those who have power over others that they will not abuse their power…
for those who are grieving…
for those who are ill…
O gracious Lord, receive our prayers.  Amen.

⁴ For they have no pain;
    their bodies are sound and sleek.
⁵ They are not in trouble as others are;
    they are not plagued like other people.
⁶ Therefore pride is their necklace;
    violence covers them like a garment.
⁷ Their eyes swell out with fatness;
    their hearts overflow with follies.
⁸ They scoff and speak with malice;
    loftily they threaten oppression.
⁹ They set their mouths against heaven,
    and their tongues range over the earth.

¹⁰ Therefore the people turn and praise them,^[b]
    and find no fault in them.^[c]
11 And they say, “How can God know?
    Is there knowledge in the Most High?”
¹² Such are the wicked;
    always at ease, they increase in riches.
¹³ All in vain I have kept my heart clean
    and washed my hands in innocence.
¹⁴ For all day long I have been plagued,
    and am punished every morning.

¹⁵ If I had said, “I will talk on in this way,”
    I would have been untrue to the circle of your children.
¹⁶ But when I thought how to understand this,
    it seemed to me a wearisome task,
¹⁷ until I went into the sanctuary of God;
    then I perceived their end.
¹⁸ Truly you set them in slippery places;
    you make them fall to ruin.
¹⁹ How they are destroyed in a moment,
    swept away utterly by terrors!
²⁰ They are^[d] like a dream when one awakes;
    on awaking you despise their phantoms.

²¹ When my soul was embittered,
    when I was pricked in heart,
²² I was stupid and ignorant;
    I was like a brute beast toward you.
²³ Nevertheless I am continually with you;
    you hold my right hand.
²⁴ You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will receive me with honor.^[e]
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.
²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength^[f] of my heart and my portion forever.

²⁷ Indeed, those who are far from you will perish;
    you put an end to those who are false to you.
²⁸ But for me it is good to be near God;
    I have made the Lord God my refuge,
    to tell of all your works.

Prayer

We repeat the psalmist’s sentiment, “it is good to be near God.” We make you our refuge. You are the God of our salvation, the one who brings wholeness and healing, compassion and hope, joy and peace. We thank you for the ways you bring those to us and make them part of our lives. You bless us with these gifts even when we are at our most vulnerable and desperate. Bless us today with your strength and remain with your world even when we human beings try to push you away and exclude you from our lives. Bring your peace to your world, bring your justice, and help us to live together. Put out the fires we have set and watched burn. Purge our hearts of hatred and fear. Nurture your love within us so what we say and do will bring you glory.  Give us wisdom as we move through our days. Amen.

I hear a voice I had not known:
⁶ “I relieved your^[b] shoulder of the burden;
    your^[c] hands were freed from the basket.
⁷ In distress you called, and I rescued you;
    I answered you in the secret place of thunder;
    I tested you at the waters of Meribah.Selah
⁸ Hear, O my people, while I admonish you;
    O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
⁹ There shall be no strange god among you;
    you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
¹⁰ I am the Lord your God,
    who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
    Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

¹¹ “But my people did not listen to my voice;
    Israel would not submit to me.
¹² So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
    to follow their own counsels.
¹³ O that my people would listen to me,
    that Israel would walk in my ways!
¹⁴ Then I would quickly subdue their enemies,
    and turn my hand against their foes.
¹⁵ Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him,
    and their doom would last forever.
¹⁶ I would feed you^[d] with the finest of the wheat,
    and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

⁵ By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance,
    O God of our salvation;
you are the hope of all the ends of the earth
    and of the farthest seas.
⁶ By your^[a] strength you established the mountains;
    you are girded with might.
⁷ You silence the roaring of the seas,
    the roaring of their waves,
    the tumult of the peoples.
⁸ Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;
you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.

⁹ You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.
¹⁰ You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
¹¹ You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
¹² The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
¹³ the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

³ For the insolent have risen against me,
    the ruthless seek my life;
    they do not set God before them.Selah

⁴ But surely, God is my helper;
    the Lord is the upholder of^[a] my life.
⁵ He will repay my enemies for their evil.
    In your faithfulness, put an end to them.

⁶ With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you;
    I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good.
⁷ For he has delivered me from every trouble,
    and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.

Reflection:
There are times when I read the psalms and wonder how many enemies could the psalmist possibly have?  But then again, this psalm is credited to David who many.  He was chosen to be king, but Saul already wore the crown.  In this psalm David, who had been on the run from Saul, had been betrayed by the Ziphites who revealed to Saul where David was hiding.  He had enemies everywhere.  Sadly, even after David became king, he found enemies within his own inner circle, his friends, and even his family.  And of course there times when David was his own worst enemy.

David’s prayers for justice against his enemies seem harsh, but they were the prayers of a hunted man.  Still, even in the most fear filled time of his life, he was relying on God’s justice to prevail and God’s will to be done.  He found in his heart a way to hold onto the goodness of God and still offer thanks and praise.

While we may not feel the same urgency as David did, (I hope none of you are hiding in in the wilderness on the run from someone) we still may have enemies, people against whom we hold grudges.  People we fear, we loathe, we may even hate.  Today, may we pray for our enemies and ourselves.  May we pray for peace between us, changes of heart, God’s true justice to prevail and God’s kingdom to be present where peace is made.  May we live into the hope of God’s presence and guidance into our lives. May we pray that those who work against God’s kingdom know God’s justice, have changes of heart, learn a new way of living in the world.  May we pray for our government officials that they might be more influenced by God’s will than by their own, by deceit, by power, by fear of losing what they have.  May we cling to God, as David did, as the upholder of our lives.  Amen.