Thursday, August 23, 2012

More images catch my mind

Since I wrote about images the other day, I guess I've become more sensitive to them.
This morning at prayers my mind was more tuned in to the countless pictures created by the words of the psalms.

The imagery that caught my attention today was the vivid language used by the psalmist to describe the bad things he was calling down on the enemies of Zion. (This brings up a whole other topic of how they expected God to treat people who did bad things to them.  Since this reflection is about images, I'll wait and see if the other topic comes up in my thoughts at another time!)

Anyway, the psalmist says:
    May all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward.
    Let them be like grass on the housetops
    that withers before it grows up,
    with which reapers do not fill their hands
    or binders of sheaves their arms.....

The striking imagery of how God was expected to treat the enemies of Zion really jumped out at me.  First of all, to be shamed would, in itself, be terrible, for honor was at the core of relationships in this culture. Then to have the grass on your housetop and in your fields get so dry that it produces nothing. In this desert land homes would heat even more because the roof had no protection, the crops would fail, and food would become very scarce. This is a quite timely image for us in our country because daily we experience or read about what havoc the draught is causing in many regions.

This prayer says to me that the psalmist had great confidence in God. While I would not feel comfortable praying anything comparable to this about someone I was having trouble with, it seems to fit what I understand of the culture of the time where tribal rivalries generated much hostility. However, if I could take that degree of confidence and mingle it with my understanding of how Christ showed us how to treat our "enemies," I think my spiritual life would be a lot stronger.

a kentucky monk



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