Do You Hear Me?

Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry;
give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.

                                                   Psalm 17: 1

I love the Psalms – perhaps it has to do with the fact that so many were originally meant to be musical, and I relate to that.  There is something transcendent about hearing (and singing) the Psalms, expressed in so many beautiful settings within our Anglican choral tradition. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that within those 150 individual prayers, every possible human emotion is expressed, from the most anguished despair to the most unrestrained joy. 

As I read and ponder this single verse from Psalm 17, written when David was in one of those anguished places in which he so often found himself, I’m struck by the fact that he is pleading with the Lord his God from a place of what he asserts to be his own righteousness.  It seems like he’s saying, “Look, I’ve lived up to all you’ve asked of me – check me out, and you’ll see that’s true. Based on that, what I’m praying for is worth your ear.”  Of course, it stems from David’s time when the law of Moses, and keeping it, was everything.

 I honestly can’t recall a time when I’ve felt lost or isolated or desperate, that I’ve ever started my prayers with “OK, you need to listen to me now because I’ve lived a righteous life, and what I’m asking is worth your ear”.   Quite the opposite – I find myself recounting how many ways I have failed to live up to what is asked of me, which necessitates my prayer in the first place.  And yet, I pray with total confidence that God hears me, even in my own unrighteousness.  I think the difference between me and David in this regard is that I have something he didn’t – Jesus, who came to fulfill the law.  Instead of righteousness being the precursor for being heard, it is by asking God for help that the strength and opportunity (sometimes, at least in my case, over and OVER again) to turn what is unrighteousness in our lives into that which is good and gracious, and fulfills our call to be God’s presence in the world. 

 That, for me, is cause for unrestrained joy!        

-Chris Winchell