Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me.”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, February 20, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
This part of Psalm 41 makes me think of high school. No, seriously. I don’t mean to minimize the gravity of the psalmist’s pain, but verses 7-9 just scream “adolescence!” to me. How well I remember the feeling that everyone was whispering together about me, when in reality most of them didn’t have the bandwidth to bother about me at all. And this bit about betrayal by bosom friends? I watched this happen to my best friend more than once. One of the times, I was the betrayer (she has long forgiven me, and even claims she can’t remember what I did, but I do.)
This is not to say that this kind of pain and betrayal doesn’t happen among adults. Of course it does. But at least in my personal experience it’s not as rampant. The kind of in-fighting and back-biting that seems epidemic among those whose frontal lobes are not fully formed gives way in adulthood to different kinds of anguish. Sometimes it’s caused by random circumstances while others it is embedded in our relationships. We may not become social pariahs or cast out by our families to the point where people are whispering about us or outright betraying us, but there are plenty of other, more subtle dysfunctions between us that can create tension and might lead to estrangement. In such cases, I can’t say I recommend coming back to v. 10, in which the psalmist asks God to “raise me up, that I might repay them.” Retaliation never works to bring out any kind of satisfactory resolution. Instead, it escalates issues until what began as a mild disagreement in a relationship turns into an all-out war. That’s where the real pain starts.
No, if I were to re-write v. 10, I would say, “But you, God, be gracious to me, and give me the humility to know my own part and the strength to forgive so that I might be free of resentment.”
Have I experienced betrayal in my life? How did God help me in my pain?
