Psalm 80:2b                             “Stir up your might and come to save us!”     

One day I was on a side street, on my way to the Post Office.  I came to one particular intersection and slowed down, because many times those coming from the street on my right don’t take the stop sign on their corner very seriously.  Sure enough, a car zoomed around the corner right in front of me.  Had I not slowed up, even though I had the right of way, they would have crashed right into my passenger door.  The license plate on this car that was now just ahead of my front bumper said: TRSTGD.  Immediately I was muttering to the person in that car, telling them that it was all well and good to trust God, but there’s a fair portion of this life we need to take responsibility for ourselves---like using our brains and obeying stop signs.  We want to be rescued, saved, spared, and we think God should do it, sometimes taking ourselves out of the equation.

As we read Psalm 80, we find that some manner of crisis has taken place.  James Mays says: “Whatever the original historical setting, the psalm in its continued use belongs to the repertoire of the afflicted people of God on their way through the troubles of history.” There is some kind of problem they can’t seem to solve, and they are praying earnestly to God, to “stir up your might and come to save us!”  That’s all well and good, unless we are praying for God to do what we can do for ourselves.  In fact, someone has proposed that God won’t do what we can do for ourselves.  William Sloane Coffin puts it this way: “One shouldn’t be too upset about the way the ball bounces if one has dropped it oneself.”

We are in such a messed up world, and too many times I hear people say that we just need God to get us out of this situation, and to make things right.  Yet, my take on all this is that God has given us amazing capabilities, we just haven’t used them up to their full potential.  We have too often had our minds centered on just what we want or what we need, and in the process have ruined our environment, have lost sight of justice, and have left behind any hopes for a peaceful world.  We’ve gotten ourselves into this pickle, and I believe God has given us the resources to get ourselves out of it, if we will be used them creatively.

“There is no reason to assume, for example, that God will end nuclear weaponry.  If the world ends in a nuclear blast, it will not be this God who did it.  We created nuclear weapons; we can end them ourselves. As W. H. Auden put it: ‘May it not be that, just as we have to have faith in God, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for God than it is for us?’”     Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope by Joan Chittister, p. 43.

I am inspired by Habitat for Humanity’s process of doubling the number of houses that are built.  Initially, volunteers and outside sources provide the cash to build a house.  Then when a family moves into their new house, and begins to make payments on that house, that money is used by Habitat to start another new house.  What a creative way of financing the building of homes.  And, yes, those persons who have built that house give thanks to God on the day that it is completed, but they haven’t simply stood around wringing their hands, in the midst of a crumbling neighborhood, asking that God do something here.  They’ve picked up a hammer, and with God’s help, built a house.

Sue Burwell

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