Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The Standard

Psalm 28

It seems 2007 was a year of more than the usual number of awkward episodes in the lives of famous people. Many of those episodes were less embarrassing than the amount of attention given them. I find it especially curious how CBC in a famous meltdowns feature lumps together famous people of completely different fields. It all seems to come under entertainment, whether it’s a former prime minister (Brian Mulroney), a businessman (Conrad Black), football player (Michael Vick), a singer, actress, or person who is just famous for being famous (Spears, Lohan, Hilton), it all comes under famous people in some kind of trouble or at least under some kind of cloud (Nothing has been proved against Mulroney).

I guess it (a) helps some of us feel better about our own little messes, and/or (b) just goes to show none of us is immune from trouble. My guess is that at least some of the persons included in such a list do not appreciate being lumped together with the others. (The report linked to above seems to have overlooked Dog the Bounty Hunter, the guy who prays for the people he’s seeking and then, sometimes, calls them utterly foul names when he has them).

In Psalm 28, there are people the psalmist doesn’t particularly want to be lumped together, or swept away with:

Do not drag me away with the wicked,
with those who do evil,
who speak cordially with their neighbors
but harbor malice in their hearts.

In this case he protests innocence, but the real basis of his appeal is not his own character, but the Lord’s. He appeals to the Lord’s mercy (verses 2, 6). It is by God’s strength and mercy we are not swept away in a tide of decadence, amorality, and, um, whatever the opposite of integrity is.

Prayer:
Lord, let my standard not be not to be like certain others, but to be more like Jesus. Amen.

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