An exercise I enjoy is taking a Bible Psalm and re-writing it to fit that theme into today's world.
In Psalm 6 David seeks deliverance in a younger world; in mine, an older and different world, the story changes while the prayer remains.
David is pursued by enemies and fears his sin has ignited God's wrath causing God to turn from him. His prayer describes the agony he feels at God's absence.
. . . I too have felt God's absence . . .
I have walked the edge of the void
and peered into the darkness . . .
Not God's wrath do I find
but man's thunderous denial!
Life is a precarious balance
between God's goodness and man's selfishness
When God is taken out of the equation
man is free to create hell.
My heart has never been without a longing for God,
but the rest of me lives in a world of ever present denial of His being
not just by words of brilliant men from Fredrick Nietzsche
to Karl Marks
to Steven Hawking
but by daily demonstrations:
such as obscenities and pornography protected by law
while prayer is banned from schools;
as the few luxuriating in opulent wealth while
orphaned children sift through garbage heaps;
as men of power willingly destroy cities and
slaughter their citizens to keep that power.
On a daily basis the God of Love is mocked and slandered by our
entertainment saturated society.
I live in this reality we've created which ever makes the case
for a godless universe . . .
and the plausibility of that conclusion seeps through to threaten . . .
Awareness asks: IS GOD?
The shouts of 'No' drown the whispers of 'Yes'
6 . . . 7 . . . 8? billion people . . .
In my aloneness I become a grain of sand on an endless desert
My soul is in anguish,
How long O Lord, how long?
When your absence is all that I feel,
my soul is inconsolable
my eyes grow weak with sorrow
when I realize the strength of my enemy!
. . . still I pray
Turn, O Lord, and deliver me
save me because of your unfailing love!
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