February 27: Prayer for Protection from the Wicked
♫ Music:
Day 14 - Tuesday, February 27
Title: Prayer for Protection from the Wicked
Scripture: Psalm 5:1-12
Give ear to my words, O Lord,
Consider my groaning.
Heed the sound of my cry for help, my King and my God,
For to You I pray.
In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice;
In the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.
For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness;
No evil dwells with You.
The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes;
You hate all who do iniquity.
You destroy those who speak falsehood;
The Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.
But as for me, by Your abundant lovingkindness I will enter Your house,
At Your holy temple I will bow in reverence for You.
O Lord, lead me in Your righteousness because of my foes;
Make Your way straight before me.
There is nothing reliable in what they say;
Their inward part is destruction itself.
Their throat is an open grave;
They flatter with their tongue.
Hold them guilty, O God;
By their own devices let them fall!
In the multitude of their transgressions thrust them out,
For they are rebellious against You.
But let all who take refuge in You be glad,
Let them ever sing for joy;
And may You shelter them,
That those who love Your name may exult in You.
For it is You who blesses the righteous man, O Lord,
You surround him with favor as with a shield.
Poetry: In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
By Anna Akhmatova
We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.
The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring
Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.
And so I covered up my face, imploring
God to destroy me before battle fell.
And from my memory the shadows vanished
Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need.
The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—
A book of portents terrible to read.
EXHAUSTING GOD'S LOVINGKINDNESS
“One, two, three, four . . .”
With each number gasps from the crowd could be heard. Some individuals—perhaps subconsciously—slowly start to move away. The one counting is Robert Ingersoll who had been dubiously labeled, the champion blasphemer of America. Ingersoll was a lawyer, civil war veteran, accomplished orator, and ardent atheist. On his office door was a sign: “I don’t need salvation!” In the late 1800s Ingersoll became famous for attending town gatherings and boldly proclaiming that as an outspoken blasphemer he deserved to be struck down by the Almighty. He then proclaimed that if God existed He should strike him down in the next 20 seconds.
“Nine, ten, eleven, twelve . . .” Confident nothing would happen, Ingersoll grew louder and more belligerent.
“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!” Nothing. Silence. Ingersoll smirked as he strutted away.
I must confess that when hearing of Ingersoll’s antics, I greatly desired for lightening to come down and settle the issue. None came so I’m left with the question: Why didn’t God take Ingersoll up on his challenge? King David writes that “the boastful shall not stand before Thine eyes” (Ps. 5:5). Yet, the most famous blasphemer in the country shook his fist toward the heavens and lived to tell the story. Why?
What if God not only accepted Ingersoll’s challenge, but took the radical step of setting a deadline for ridding the world of evil? Suppose God announces that next Monday at midnight He will step in and stop all evil? How would He do that? Imagine God decides to utilize a tool used by police officers—a Taser gun.
A Taser gun shoots an individual with a temporary high-voltage current of electricity. The makers of Taser guns claim that a shock of ½ second will cause intense pain and muscle contraction. Two to three seconds will cause a person to become dazed and drop to the ground. Anything over three seconds will drop an attacker for up to fifteen minutes. In other words, hit a person with enough electricity and you can get him or her to do anything.
When the deadline for stopping evil comes, God gets us to comply with his wishes by shocking us. Start to tell a lie and you are hit with a ½ second zap. Try to rob a person and you get two seconds of shock. A would-be murderer would be incapacitated. However, knowing that evil thoughts often lead to evil actions, God also zaps us for sinister thoughts. God’s not finished. Since it’s evil to fail to do good when given the opportunity, God zaps us for failing to show mercy, kindness, and justice. As a result, people are zapped for doing evil acts, thinking evil thoughts, and failing to do what is right. What would be the result? A world of twitchy people, who obey God like a cowering, beaten dog. Certainly, in such a world Ingersoll would never even have the chance to utter his blasphemous challenge. After the first arrogant word a zap would shut him up.
However, what kind of world would God have once His deadline passed and zaps commenced? If God shocked people every time we did evil, He would get a world of surface actors—people acting virtuous while harboring ill feelings toward others and God. “It is worth noting that the whole point of Christianity,” explains J.B. Phillips, “lies not in interference with the human power to choose, but in producing a willing consent to choose good rather than evil.”
What people like Ingersoll forget is that God’s lovingkindness is not easily exhausted. “But as for me,” writes David, “by Thine abundant lovingkindness I will enter Thy house” (Ps. 5:7). This written by a king guilty of adultery and premeditated murder. In the Old Testament the Hebrew term “hesed” meant steadfast love, mercy, goodness, and great kindness. Since there is no English equivalent to hesed scholars created the word “lovingkindness.” Mentioned over 30 times, it is one of the definitive characteristics of God. Thus, we are taught to not only “love kindness” (Micah 6:8), but to “show kindness and compassion” to all (Zech 7:9).
Understanding that lovingkindness is central to God it’s not surprising that Ingersoll received mercy rather than judgment. “You are slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness” concludes Nehemiah (9:17). Rather than living in a world of corrective zaps, we—like Ingersoll—live under God’s mercy and kindness that cannot be exhausted by a count of 20.
Prayer
“At Thy holy temple I will bow in reverence for Thee” (Ps. 5:7). This Lent season let me, like David, bow in reverence toward a God who abounds in hessed and commands me to extend lovingkindness to myself and the Ingersolls of the world.
Tim Muehlhoff
Professor of Communication
Biola University
About the Artwork:
The Feast of the Tabernacles
Marc Zakharovich Chagall
1916
Gouache
41 x 33 cm
The most visible symbol of Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles is the small booth known as the sukkah that the Israelites are commanded to dwell in for the eight days of the Feast (Leviticus 23:33-43). Jewish families build these makeshift decorated huts on their patios, balconies, or in their yards. Some families eat their meals in the sukkah and even sleep there at night. They are a reminder to Israel that they once dwelled in temporary shelters during the forty years spent in the wilderness, completely dependent on the Lord’s provision. God’s protection as our shield and shelter, mentioned in Psalm 5, is illustrated by this tradition that Chagall, as a Jew, knew well. Families sing together during their time in the Sukkot booth or tabernacle, demonstrating the admonition in this passage to “ever sing for joy.”
About the Artist:
Marc Zakharovich Chagall (1887-1985) was a French-Russian draftsman, painter, and printmaker. His distinction lies in his steady adherence to figurative and narrative art, while exploring ideas from Fauvism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Chagall's Jewish identity was important to him throughout his life, and much of his work can be described as an attempt to reconcile old Jewish traditions with styles of modernist art. Chagall recounted in his autobiography My Life: Marc Chagall that one of the major influences on his life as an artist was the culture and traditions of Hasidic Judaism. However, he also occasionally drew on Christian themes, which appealed to his interest for narrative and allegory. In the 1920s, the emerging Surrealists claimed Chagall as a kindred spirit although he ultimately rejected their more conceptual subject matter. The appeal to Surrealists was the dream-like quality characteristic of almost all of Chagall's work. Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is."
About the Music:
“Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind II. Teneramente” from the album Dreams and Prayers
About the Composer:
Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1969) grew up in an Eastern European Jewish home in Argentina. He studied musical composition at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy in Israel, immersing himself in the different musical traditions of the Holy Land. Golijov moved to the United States in 1986 to study with avant-garde composer George Crumb. The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, originally recorded by David Krakauer and the Kronos Quartet, focuses on the mysticism of Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac the Blind of Provence. In it, the clarinet serves as the Jewish cantor, weeping and praying for peace and communion. The final postlude completes a prayer from the beginning of the work “...Thou pass and record, count and visit, every living soul, appointing the measure of every creature’s life and decreeing its destiny.”
About the Performers:
Clarinetist David Krakauer (b. 1956) is recognized for his ability to grip audiences with his stunning technique and visceral musicality. He has given solo, collaborative, and orchestral concerts around the world, bridging genres as far flung as funk, hip hop, and jazz. Countless commissions and collaborations with composers make Krakauer as an innovator in both classical and modern klezmer music. With a deep passion to educate the next generation, he serves on the music faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College at the New School, and the Bard Conservatory.
Self-conducted chamber orchestra A Far Cry consists of eighteen musicians called "The Criers." The chamber group was founded in 2007 in Boston, MA, where they continue to be based. A Far Cry has toured nationally and internationally. They also collaborate with local students in an educational partnership with the New England Conservatory of Music. The orchestra has released seven albums; their album Dreams & Prayers was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2015 for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance.
About the Poet:
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) was one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem, her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist Terror, a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union, which occurred from 1936 to 1938. Primary sources of information about Akhmatova's life are relatively scant since war, revolution, and a totalitarian regime destroyed most of the written records. For long periods she was in official disfavor and many of those who were close to her died in the aftermath of the revolution including her first husband, Nikolay Gumilyov, her son Lev Gumilyov and her common-law husband Nikolay Punin. Between 1935 and 1940 Akhmatova composed, worked, and reworked the long poem Requiem in secret. A lyrical cycle of lamentation and witness, the poem depicts the suffering of the common people under Soviet terror. Requiem finally appeared in book form in 1963, but the whole work was not published within USSR until 1987. It consists of ten numbered poems that examine a series of emotional states, exploring suffering, despair, devotion, rather than composing one clear narrative. This long poem is often critically regarded as her best work, and also one of the finest poems of the twentieth century.
About the Devotional Writer:
Tim Muehlhoff is a Professor of Communication at Biola University where he teaches classes on family communication, gender, persuasion, and apologetics. His newest book is Winsome Persuasion: Christian Influence in a Post-Christian World co-written with Rick Langer, IVP Academic, June 2017. He currently serves as an author/speaker with Biola’s Center for Marriage and Relationships.