Psalm 130

Pentecost +10 – Year B

Psalm 130

Ah, sweet anticipation!

If you read The Neverending Story (the two color print version) or Momo by Michael Ende (and of course you will run right out to do so) an encroaching dark is the depth from which the Psalmist cries.

This dark is offset by a coming to terms with one's own power and an appreciation of time. This is a preemptive forgiveness that brightens one's eye for both the availability of the moment to be significant and a morning brightness to be considered as real, not a false dawn.

When our anticipation meets our power, the redemption available from steadfast love breaks the bounds of the personal and encompasses the communal. Our seemingly small and brave decisions have immense opportunity to affect a whole community. What joy to be able to participate in such a larger redemption.

This may be an equation that is the moral equivalent of e=mc(squared). r=pa(squared) or redemption equals power times the square of anticipation.

Do you think there is a downside to this equation – like, with radiation, an atomic bomb versus a cancer therapy? Imagine a stereotypic TV preacher using this formula for their own aggrandizement. Is there a boundary that would be appropriate to put in place around this formula to both enhance it and lessen an opportunity for misuse? [Might it be an intentional, communal anticipation of a day when such would no longer be needed?]