A Prayer for Help

“Be not silent, O God of my praise!  For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues.  They encircle me with words of hate, and attack me without cause.  In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer.  So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.” –Psalm 109:1-5 (ESV).

Another of the Psalms attributed to David, this Psalm is a lament on the occasion when a faithful Israelite (namely the writer of the psalm) is suffering attacks of vicious accusers. These situations seemed to occur frequently during the reign of David.  Early on, after he was anointed by Samuel to become King, and during the time Saul still reigned, David became the target of the monarch’s jealous rage, causing David to have to flee for his life and hide out in caves.  Later, when David ascended to the throne, family jealousies and intrigues marked his time in office.  One of the sad things David admits is this:  “In return for my love they accuse me” (v. 4).  Scholars also see in this Psalm a foreshadowing of how the Messiah was treated.  For Jesus’ love, He was accused, hated and rewarded with death.  Both David and the Messiah turned to God in praise and prayer, thus making the lament a song of victory.

I have long been an admirer of President Abraham Lincoln and have several books in my personal library about him.  One I frequent often is entitled In Lincoln’s Hand: His Original Manuscripts (New York: Random House, 2009).  His writings, in his own hand, were selected from the time period 1824 through 1865, with his second inaugural address being the last of his writings included, delivered March 4, 1865.  He would die a little more than a month later, on April 15, 1865, downed by an assassin’s bullet.  We know the terrible conditions under which President Lincoln governed. The war that split the country had a total of 623,000 casualties.  Lincoln did not live to preside during his second term, but his surviving short speech is resonating with insight and wisdom.  It would be well for us to read a copy to see how deftly he defined conditions and pled for divine intervention to end the conflict and lead the nation to unite again.  His last paragraph has often been quoted:

            “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right,

            as God gives us to see the right, ;let us strive on to finish the work we are in;

            to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle,

            and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish

            a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Prayer.  Lord, our country is not now torn by Civil War as it was in the days when President Lincoln governed.  But we are torn by distrust, a diffusion of ideologies, burdensome indebtedness, and those who put personal gain above the pursuit of the common good.  As David in the long ago, we earnestly pray, “Be not silent, O God of my praise!...I give myself to prayer.”  Hear our prayer, O God, and turn Your face toward healing our land that we may have, as President Lincoln prayed, “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.