Friday, December 10, 2004
Week Two, Day Six

This is a Royal Psalm, a ‘Psalm of Solomon’ (though some sources name it a ‘Prayer of David’).  In either case, it qualifies as being created by ‘a branch from the root of Jesse,’ David’s father.  Reading it, one hears the longing for a great and just leader – full of wisdom and good judgment.  I believe this is a universal longing, as appropriate today as it was 3,000 years ago.

The psalm opens up for us the opportunity to look at leadership and perhaps begin to see the psalm as a kind of plumb-line for our experiences with our own leaders.  The standards are high:  good judgment; justice, especially for the poor and suffering; peace and prosperity (not just for the few); and rescuing the oppressed and down-trodden. 

Do our leaders meet standards like that?  Or even consider them?  It seems we talk and read more about injustice and evil than about justice and good judgment.

I love the water imagery.  For a leader to be “like rain falling on early crops” – like showers watering the earth” – gives us a glimpse of the good feeling, the nurturing and strength and encouragement a leader can provide.  It makes a real difference to ‘the people,’ who then – like the image in Isaiah 58:11 “will be like a watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”  How important wise leadership truly is!  It even extends its influence far beyond the boundaries it serves.

Where are the oppressed, the suffering, the innocent victims today?  Everywhere!  They are in our communities, our cities, the countryside; in Columbia, Sudan, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Central America, and on and on.

To come to grips with the longing of so many for a new direction, this psalm pictures for us a new kind of leader.  If the leader is just, compassionate, more concerned with ‘others’ (even in other lands) than him or herself – will that not also affect the citizens who serve and offer their allegiance?  It will.