think about…
Praying Our Hate
We want to be at our best before God. Prayer, we think, means presenting ourselves before God so that he will be pleased with us. We put on our “Sunday best” in our prayers. But when we pray the prayers of God’s people, the Psalms, we find that will not do. We must pray who we actually are, not who we think we should be. Here (Psalm 137) is a prayer that brings out not the best but the worst in us: vile, venomous, vicious hate. Can God handle our hate?
And you, Babylonians - ravagers!
A reward to whoever gets back at you
for all you’ve done to us;
Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies
and smashes their heads on the rocks!
- Psalm 137.8-9
- taken from Eugene Peterson’s, “Living the Message”
