Suggested Readings: Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; Ezekiel 36:24-28; Mark 11:27-33
So much of the run-up to Christmas is focused on what we want. What do I want for Christmas this year? What am I looking forward to? What do I hope for this holiday season? And there is nothing wrong with that. It’s often good, in fact, to pay attention to what we actually want. And yet in our more honest, more self-aware moments, I suspect we know that our desires are all too often out of whack, disordered, upside down. It does not take the visionary discernment of a biblical prophet to recognize this; simply noticing the months-long consumer frenzy of American Christmas might be enough to clue us in.
One of the things that can happen when we pray the Psalms is that we discover, or perhaps are simply reminded, of just how mixed-up our desires and hopes can be. Psalm 85 is a wonderful example of this. As we pray, with the psalmist we call out for God to show us God’s salvation. And what does that salvation look like? It looks like God setting the world aright. “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace with kiss each other.” (85:10) It looks like a world itself rightly ordered, in which justice (“righteousness”) does not come at the cost of peace. It looks like a world in which the steadfast love and faithfulness of God suffuse the whole of creation, “springing up from the ground” and “look[ing] down from the sky.” (85:11) It is a vision of a whole world transformed, a world of violence and suffering and sorrow made into a world of peace and justice and love.
It is not that our other desires, our hopes for good things in this life for ourselves and for those we love, are wrong. But the psalm calls us to higher and better hopes. It reminds us of the scope of God’s own love for us and the world God has created and of the shape of salvation. It calls us to let our own hopes be transformed to be in line with God’s own work of creation and redemption. And if we keep praying the Psalms, we might just discover that our own desires start to get a little less mixed-up, a little more aligned with the peace and justice and love of God. That itself is worth hoping for this Advent season.
Brad Daugherty
Brad Daugherty
