Daily Lesson for December 13, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 38 verses 1 through 10:

  O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,

nor discipline me in your wrath!

2  For your arrows have sunk into me,

and your hand has come down on me.

3  There is no soundness in my flesh

because of your indignation;

there is no health in my bones

because of my sin.

4  For my iniquities have gone over my head;

like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.

5  My wounds stink and fester

because of my foolishness,

6  I am utterly bowed down and prostrate;

all the day I go about mourning.

7  For my sides are filled with burning,

and there is no soundness in my flesh.

8  I am feeble and crushed;

I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

9  O Lord, all my longing is before you;

my sighing is not hidden from you.

10  My heart throbs; my strength fails me,

and the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.

I have a friend who not long ago celebrated 40 years of sobriety. Sometime back, he spoke to a group of us about alcoholism and recovery and he told us that when he first got sober and returned from a long-term treatment facility his mother came to see him and said, "Your eyes are looking out again."

The road of recovery is the journey towards looking out again. It is the journey from isolation to community, shame to redemption, and sickness to health.  It is the journey from darkness back into light.

The psalmist in today's lesson is living in the darkness isolation.  By my count he uses the words "I", "me" or "my" twenty-six times in only 10 verses.  His eyes are all inward. Or, as he puts it, the light from his eyes is gone from him.

It seems hopeless. Yet, ironically, it is the hopeful moment. Suddenly he sees!  He who has no light can nonetheless see that he has no light.  All therefore is not lost because he still can see with the light of the memory of light.  He is seeing himself now with the flickering, yet doggedly defiant light we call hope.

The writer of Psalm 38 is living in darkness.  He is sick and not well. He is alone and not in community. He is thinking only of himself and not others.

But don't give up on him, because he is still talking to God, still remembering God, still remembering the Very Light of Very Light . . .