Psalm 22:23-31

I don’t know what eternal life is like, and I’ve always resisted efforts to describe it, because no one knows – and any attempts to do so make it sound eternally boring.  I remember hearing about the Anglican Bishop who said that he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to heaven because he heard there was no debating there!  The psalmist who praises the God who is above time, and active within it, doesn’t speculate about these things.  It is about promise and blessing:  “The poor shall eat and be satisfied; (and) those who seek him shall praise the Lord.”  That’s the promise, and we have a hand in it.  Meeting the needs of the poor, and longing to be in God’s presence, leads to praise.  The blessing follows – “May your hearts live forever.”  Those who extend their hearts to others, and give their hearts to God, know something already of eternity.  In scripture the “heart” is the core of who we are, and the love of God, whose heart breaks for us, will never let us go.

I love the quote from the Catholic writer on spirituality, John Shea, who in one of his poems wrote:  “The struggle is the goal; the search is what we know.  All the rest is heaven.”  ​

Yet another school shooting, this time at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  17 dead, maybe more.  The same old words don’t suffice, but the tears and the agony are as heart-felt and gut-wrenching as always.  We shall see if the political will is there to do what the vast majority of the American people support - common sense gun laws that include background checks for anyone purchasing a gun, and the outlawing of automatic weapons that have only the purpose of killing enemy combatants in war.  I encourage you all to make this known to our elected representatives.  Ours is the only nation where this happens; we are better than this.  It has been noted, with tragic irony, that this slaughter happened on Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate love.  It was also Ash Wednesday, when we acknowledge our brokenness and our mortality.  At our Ash Wednesday service yesterday, before the imposition of ashes, we prayed:  Gracious God, you have formed us from the dust; dust we are, and to dust we shall all return.  May these ashes be a reminder that our lives are always in your hands; and that though we will die, yet shall we live.  Let this be our prayer for these ashen days, and for the families, teachers and students who grieve.
 
During Lent I am offering a weekly blog based on the Psalm designated for each Sunday. 
Here is week 1 -
 
Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness sake, O Lord! Psalm 25:7
 
If you are of a certain age, you remember – with regret, perhaps even remorse - “the sins of (your) youth.”  Maybe these memories come at night, when you can’t sleep, or they surprise you like a painful bee sting that comes out of the blue.  We all have such memories, and they are difficult to shake; it’s tough to let them go.  The psalmist prays that the Lord “not remember” them.  Instead, the psalmist asks, “remember me, for your goodness sake.”  It’s a change of focus - from our sins and transgressions, to the Lord, who in his goodness, remembers not the sins but the sinner.  A prayer of Soren Kierkegaard that we sometimes use as an assurance of pardon following our prayer of confession in Sunday worship says:  “Lord, do not hold our sins against us, but hold us up against our sins, so that the thought of thee when it wakens in our souls should remind us not of what we have done, but of what we have been forgiven, not of how we have gone astray, but of how you have saved us.”