Although I have used the psalms for a great part of my life they are not the first thing I usually turn to in worship. Mostly because I often struggle to connect with the language. Images of God are limited in most translations: it's all Lord, Lord, and other images seem ancient and far away.Psalm 127 is part of the lectionary today. It's short and whilst the translation I'm readying has Lord, Lord it's also about building and protecting cities. The second part has the image of children being like 'the arrows in a soldier's hand'. In Helmand today arrows are not much prized I suspect. How to pray with women and men serving out there when we all yearn for peace and wonder at the right action to take to get there? So my rewrite of Pslam 127 in a week that saw deaths of British service personnel pass that of any year since the Falklands. Maybe these words will not sit comfortably with us and maybe that's the thing about Pslams. Too much emphasis on the comfy ones and not enough attention to the uncomfy ones.
Revised Psalm 127
If God does not build the peace
the work of the peacemakers in useless;
if the Holy One does not protect the city
then what hope for those who stand guard.
Your work is useless;
the early mornings and late nights wasted.
Whilst your are sleeping
God nourishes you with love.
We consider children to be God’s gift:
a real blessing.
The offspring a young parent has
are like ammunition to a soldier.
A soldier feels satisfied with a full clip;
such a one feels ready
when face to face with the enemy
or surveying the ground for an IED.
copyright Janet Lees: 08.11.2009
2 comments:
Thanks for these thoughts and the poetry.
I found teh image of teh soldier's full clip quite hard to take the first time I read it and then It hought about how the Psalms are so very elemental - there are alot of unacceptable emotions in the Psalms -why I like them I suppose.
Take care - we're all doing our own kind of remembering at the moment ...
Yes I found it difficult too - it was the week when having a full clip had had disastrous effects in Afganistan and the USA - but like you say elemental psalmists and also paradoxical too - having children and ammunition are not necessarily good things - it depends what happens next.
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