Psalm 7 — God Has Prepared His Deadly Weapons

When certain people plot against you, as did Ahithophel against David, and you are informed of this, sing Psalm 7, and place your trust in God, who will deliver you..

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

Another lament. So many laments in a row. This one, though, has some interesting twists such as showing God threatening the enemy and the psalmist saying, "Hey I haven't been perfect in the past, but this time I definitely deserve justice."

7:6, The Fury of Enemies

Arise, he says, using the word to mean "appear"; he employs a human and obscure expression as though God were asleep, when really he is hidden and unrecognized in his secret plans.

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

Yes. How often does this happen to us too?

7:8, My Righteousness and Integrity

Not Perfect Righteousness. Theodoret of Cyr: In these words the divine David has not left a testimony to his own righteousness: we hear him protesting the opposite, "because I acknowledge my lawlessness, and my sin is always before me"; and, "I said, 'I shall declare my lawlessness against myself to the Lord,'" but he calls it justice in the matter before us. I committed no wrong, in fact, he is saying against Absalom or Ahithophel or those arrayed in battle with them against me. So I beg to be judged in the light of this righteousness and innocence and not in the light of the faults previously committed by me. I ask for judgment on these current grounds and not for a payment of penalty at this time for other sins.  Commentary on  the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

This strikes me in the light of confession and being able to pick ourselves up, trust in God's forgiveness, and moving forward to try to do better.

7:12, God's Weapons Prepared

Yahweh prepares to mete out the punishment ... stringing and drawing the bow and preparing to let fly with flaming arrows at the enemy. This well-drawn portrait of the ready archer stops just short of release — bow straining, eye on the target; Yahweh is poised, ready to act. The picture encourages the enemies to reconsider their opposition in light of Yehweh's sure defense of the righteous.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

=====================

I would happily understand [the bow in this verse] as the holy Scriptures, where the rigidity of the Old Testament is bent and subdued by the strength of the New Testament, as by some sort of bowstring. The apostles are launched from it like arrows, or divine proclamations are hurled from it. These arrows he has fashioned ... to make those who are struck by them blaze with the love of God. ... Once struck by these and set on fire by them, you must blaze with so great a love for the kingdom of heaven that you scorn the tongues of all who block your path and want to call you back from your fixed resolve. ...

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

I like the point that thinking of what Yahweh can unleash might make the enemy change his mind. How often I've had that same experience — often by considering that I'd have to confess a deed I was contemplating. Nothing like that for making you choose the righteous path instead of sin.

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

Red Hen

 

Red Hen, Himmapaan.

Mistake and Imagination

Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know — that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling Into Happiness

How the Whale Got His Throat

How the Whale Got His Throat, illustrated by Himmapaan
Illustration for How the Whale got his Throat, in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories,
published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by The Folio Society, 2012

Which Way to Go From Here

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where –” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“– so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Jesus' Resemblance to Joseph

Jesus must have resembled Joseph in his way of working, in the traits of his character and in his way of speaking. Jesus' realism, his eye for detail, the way he sat at table and broke bread, his preference for using everyday situations in his teaching — all this reflects his childhood and the influence of Joseph.

St. Josemaria Escriva, Christ is Passing By

White-Tailed Eagle

White-Tailed Eagle, Remo Savisaar

 

Reading all the immense annotated editions of the classics

Another gem from Edmund Crispin. In this case from The Case of the Gilded Fly.

He had bought, and read, all the immense annotated editions of the classics in which the greater part of every page is occupied with commentary (with a slight gesture to the author in the form of a trickle of text up at the top, towards the page number).

A Snowman Straight Out of Miyazaki

 I picked this up from J.R.'s Art Place where he says:

A friend pointed out that this snowman looks like he stepped out of a Hayao Miyazaki film.

Woman with a snowman, early 20th century. Collotype with hand coloring; unknown photographer, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Of course, after featuring My Neighbor Totoro yesterday, I couldn't resist sharing this.

Psalm 6 – Prayer for Healing

When you feel the Lord's displeasure, if you see that you are troubled by this, you can say Psalm 6.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

There is great food for thought in the points made about asking God to judge as a father and not an authority. There is a nice difference there in the love and personal concern that a father brings versus a more disinterested judge. Surely that is the frame of mine we should always have when we turn to God.

Also, the idea that the psalmist is asking God to restore the right, the intended, order is one that reminds me about how the world was meant to be, versus what it is.

I like the way this illustration shows David surrounded by dangers — a wild animal, a man with weapons, a centaur — but he keeps his eyes on God.

Psalm 6 illustration from A Book of Hours from Namur

6:1, Not in Anger

Like a Father, Not a Judge. Theodoret of Cyr: He does not beg to be uncensured but rather not to be censured in anger, nor does he plead to avoid discipline but not to suffer it with wrath. Discipline me like a father, he asks, not like a judge; like a physician, not like a torturer. Do not fit the punishment to the crime; instead, temper justice with lovingkindness.  Commentary on  Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

6:3, How Long, O Lord, How Long?

The psalmists did not lament just the personal, individual, or societal suffering they saw and experienced. They also complained because ... the rightness that should have been an integral part of a world created by Yahweh seemed to have run amok in suffering, pain, injustice, oppression, and death. Life was not just difficult, it was not only painful, it was also very, very wrong.

... The psalmists' sense of rightness demanded that God act to reestablish his intended order. Thus, the psalmists felt free to ask, "God, what are you doing? Where are you?" By these tough questions hurled at God the psalmists were aligning themselves with the tough-minded worldview that the world as we have it is not the world as it should be or as God intended . The world is broken and needs divine help to restore it.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

 Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

None but the most blindly credulous ...

 From the disclaimer page of The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin.

NOTE
None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and nobel city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of Unlikely events and persons. But there are liimits.

It is a nutty story and what he says is absolutely true.

Still life with orange and plum

Robert Spear Dunning - Still life with orange and plum

 Right now citrus is at its height. I've been enjoying grapefruit which are my favorites but that orange looked so bright and tangy that I had to share it.

Stagecoach Mary

Mary Fields: Freighter, cook, domestic worker, star route mail carrier,
first African-American woman star route mail carrier in the U.S.

Also Catholic. They forgot to mention that part.

I first heard of Stagecoach Mary on the American Catholic History podcast, which I recommend you listen to right here.

The Reality of Tuna Casserole

 I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

 

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as "Murderbot." Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to finish watching all the TV shows it's downloaded.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

Light, entertaining, fun, exciting. All that with a sense of humor and a mystery to solve in order to keep everyone alive. I like that Murderbot uses its free will to spend all day watching TV, if possible. I also liked the reason that it was capable of the killing that makes it name itself "Murderbot."

In a way, it felt a bit like it could have been from the Firefly universe. Or maybe Futurama? Every time Murderbot said "kill all humans" - and it was said a fair number of times - Bender flashed before my eyes.

I've seen a few complaints that this is too short and episodic feeling. You mean just like the entertainment that Murderbot loves to watch so much? Maybe that's why I liked it. Sometimes all you want is a good episodic adventure with a likable hero struggling against the odds. And that's what we've got here.

Returning to the mud

The French in another context call this "nostalgia for the mud." They mean a bourgeois romanticization of impoverishment. But I mean it in spiritual terms. Every time I recognized the truth and lived it, I was happy, and when I did not, I was not. And yet I always returned to not-happy, as if that were ... warm and happy mud.

Peggy Noonan, John Paul the Great

The Ferry

The Ferry, E. Phillips Fox

 I love the brightness  of the women's gowns against the brown of the wharf and ferry.

The Night of the 3rd Ult.

The Night of the 3D Ult. [copyright 1890]. First edition, first issue.

Set in London, in a lower class boarding house, and concerns the doings of both a police detective and a private detective. Bleiler calls the ending of this novel “almost brilliant.” OCLC locates only three copies of this title, including the deposit copy at the Library of Congress. A significant and very scarce detective novel.

Image and description via Books and Art

This sounds like just my type of book. Too bad it is so rare.

Psalm 5 — The Holiness of God and the Power of Words

When you see the evildoers planning to lie in wait for you, and you wish your prayer to be heard, get up at dawn and say Psalm 5.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

There is an emphasis on the power of words here which really struck me — from the beginning where the psalmist beseeches, "Hear my words, O Lord" and toward the end where the enemies' mouths are compared to an open sepulchre.

Jewish sepulchre, 1st century

 5:1 Hear My Words, O Lord

God Weighs Our Words, and So Should We. Asterius the Homilist. God judges your cry: whether you have cried out against anyone unjustly, whether you have trumpeted unjust anger with your cry or whether you, overcome with such wrath, have called for the striking down of the innocent, like those who stoned Stephen: "Shouting with a loud voice, they covered their ears and in one spirit united against him they rushed him." And their shout became a vehicle of murder. God, therefore tests your words ... Homilies on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

There is something about the shout being a vehicle of murder that really brings home how careful we should be before we speak.

5:9 An Open Sepulcher

By telling lies and employing seductive flattery, people draw to themselves those whom they entice to sin, and they swallow them, so to speak when they make them turn to their own style of life. When this happens the flatterers die through their sin, and so it is right to refer to those by whom they are drawn in as open graves; indeed they themselves are somehow lifeless in that they lack the life of truth , and they gather into themselves the dead whom they have slain by lying words and empty hearts, making their victims into copies of themselves.

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

This seems like a horror novel, doesn't it? The undead swallowing up those they have enticed to them and making them into clones? We think of slander or gossip as a fairly benign sin but this helps see below the surface to the unholy horror that can come from using words wrongly.

 5:4-6, You Are Not a God Who Takes Pleasure in Evil
5:7-8, But I By Your Great Mercy

The psalmist begins with a phrase that describes the essential nature of Yahweh from which human consequences flow: God is incompatible with evil. Where God is, evil cannot coexist. ...

It is this understanding of the essential nature of God that informs Israel's unique perception of the holiness of Yahweh. In general, the ancient Near Eastern concept of holiness was devoid of any essentially moral element. Holiness was defined by reference to the gods; to be holy was to be what the gods were. Morally, the ancient Near Eastern gods demonstrated no clear distinction from humans. they acted in anger, in lust, or for personal gain. ... Their chief distinction from humans was that they were powerful and lived forever. Thus they were considered the source of both good and evil in human experience ... often completely unrelated to any human responsibility.

Israel's understanding of the character of Yahweh broke with this longstanding tradition. As the psalmist's statements imply, Yahweh's holiness was defined by his essential character. Yahweh is eternal and powerful, but he is also essentially good and incompatible with evil. As a consequence, those who align themselves with evil will suffer the consequences of divine rejection. ...

Yahweh's holiness has two sides. Not only is it incompatible with evil, ... it is also characterized by his relentless goodness" toward his creation and those humans who live in it. ... Yahweh's holiness is not just the basis for his judgment on sin but is at the same time the foundation for his work of salvation.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

I do love the fact that the Hebrew worldview is reflected so thoroughly in something like this psalm. Of course, it is liturgical and so should, of course, show us something of God. But I never thought of it in just this way when reading this psalm before.

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

Andy-cane

The holidays are past and we regretfully give up our candy canes until next year.

But we've got something even better — our Andy-cane!