Psalm 35

Dear God,

I know that I will be standing in your presence in the age to come but things are pretty tough right now.  Just so I know that I am still in good standing with you, and so the evil people know that they are not, would you please:

·       Give all the kids that pick on me at school a bloody nose.

·       Give my boss, you know him—he is meaner than mean for no reason, would you please give him a bad case of hemorrhoids for at least a month.

·       Lord, would you please make the telemarketers who keep lighting up my phone get struck by lightning every time they call my number.  I don’t want them struck dead; just scorch them good so they can’t call me anymore.

·       Would you please add a “Praying” button to Facebook so I don’t have to click “Like” when somebody posts that Uncle Bob had a heart attack and needs prayers.  I don’t want people to think that I “like” the fact that he had a heart attack and it takes so much effort to type in the word “praying” as a comment.

·       Lord, this one is near and dear to my heart.  Would you just smote some ISIS people just so they know they are bad and need to throw in the towel before the rest of them get smoted.

·       While you are at it, would you smote some of the other terrorist groups too.  Just sayin’ that those of us who follow you would like to watch a good terrorist smotin on CNN every once in a while.  It would be good for morale.

·       And I almost forgot, you know those people that I helped a couple times expecting nothing in return, and then they went and talked bad about me behind my back, please grant them ingrown toenails for life without relief and let them know it was because of the way that they treated me.  Really, I would like a little vindication to go with proclaiming your name in the assembly and being a man after your heart.  I would like to cash in on some benefits now, just a few please.

·       Lord, I need some vindication.  I can’t take much more of these yahoos  strutting their wicked ways in my face and saying na, na, na, na na…

·       Lord, if you want I will put together a smotin’ list.  We could publish it on the back of the prayer list.  You could knock out 4 or 5 a week.

·       And of course, Lord, if you do all of this I will be singing your praises all day long.

I had some fun putting these together but the fun part was that sometimes we are a little like this.  We want some vindication.  That is very much our human nature.  We don’t always go to the extreme of being vindictive in our desires, we just want some vindication.

We want God to make a public announcement that we are doing things right and the rest of you had better take notice.  Sometimes we just want to cry out to God, or write a letter or a psalm, asking God to vindicate us.

Enough of my fun, let’s hear what David said.  Let’s hear David put a very human spin on a man after God’s own heart who just wants a little vindication; and after that I will ask you to consider what the Son of David said about all of this.

Read Psalm 35

David gives us insight into our own human nature.  The Son of David would challenge us to exchange this human nature for his own divine nature.  How?

Try this on for size:  Love your enemies.