Today’s Lenten Word Meditation comes from Psalm 43 NRSV:
1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people;
from those who are deceitful and unjust
deliver me!
2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge;
why have you cast me off?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 O send out your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy;
and I will praise you with the harp,
O God, my God.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise God,
my help and my God.The word, hope (yachal in Hebrew), means to wait, hope. Psalm 43 is a sorrowful prayer. Some call it spiritual depression as the person(s) writing this psalm is being oppressed.
Today I sit, hold, and pray with the word, hope. What emerges from my meditation are: feelings of optimism, feelings of future, and feelings of good times. Some might believe that hope is an attitude that one should always have. I believe that hope is a part of faith. Yet I wrestle with the word, hope. I cannot fully imagine/understand people that are oppressed for generations still being hopeful. I cannot imagine/understand Jesus on the Cross having hope as he is dying and wanting to be saved. Maybe hope is faith when the odds of change are zero.
What is hope to you?
Pastor Sam
