Excerpt from Psalm 119:113-128

"It is time for thee, Lord, to work, for they have made void thy law."

Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell

It's like the psalmist is God's mom or something, and God's slept too late on the weekend again.  "What are you doing still in bed?!" she yells as she comes in and rips the blankets off.  "It's past 11!  Look at this place; it's a pigsty!  And you promised to mow the lawn today!  Get your butt out of bed, and get to work!"  The psalmists are always treating God like that, threatening to take away privileges and stuff ("No worship for a whole month if you let my enemies defeat me!").  I love it.

Unfortunately, we're not actually sure that's what the verse says.  The Hebrew can be translated another way: "It's time to work for the LORD".  According to this reading, it's not God who's to go to work when the place is a mess and everybody's breaking the rules; it's us.  One piece of Jewish midrash imagines the rooster singing these words to the world every morning.  We're the ones with the pillows over our heads, groaning because the morning light's too bright.

What issue do you care about most?  What's the problem that sets your blood boiling—or makes it run cold?  More to the point, what problem do you believe sets God's blood boiling?  Have you done anything about it lately, or have you been sleeping in?  What one thing you could do to advance that cause today?

Because, you know, this room really could use a good cleaning.

Prayer

Dear Lord, wake me up and put me to work.  Amen.

About the Author Quinn G. Caldwell, a United Church of Christ minister, is the co-author, with Curtis J. Preston, of the Unofficial Handbook of the United Church of Christ, published by The Pilgrim Press.