Reflection on Psalm 9

There are several of us trying to be accountable for reading through the Psalms. We follow kairos (God's time) not kronos (time as we know it) so our pace is unpredictable. (so don't expect Psalm 10's reflection next Sunday!) I wrote this to share with the reading group and decided to share more widely.

God's a safe-house for the battered, a sanctuary during bad times. (Psalm 9:9 The Message)

For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever. (Psalm 9:18 NRS)

Coming off two weeks immersed in some of the urban ministries of Chicago, these are the verses from Psalm 9 that jumped out to me.

Verse 9 does not say that God will provide a sanctuary but that God, God's own self and being, are our sanctuary. We find refuge and strength in being with God. The First United Methodist Church, also called the Chicago Temple, sits across City Plaza from City Hall and the mayor's office downtown but they keep their sanctuary open 24 hours, 7 days a week, year-round. Homeless people come in off the street, rest, pray, sleep, carrying their belongings. At 2 p.m. six days a week, other people join a free public tour of the building which stretches 400 feet above the city sidewalk. On Wednesday mornings, the church offers communion to commuters extending an invitation to an open table to whosoever chooses to eat. They are opening their space and offering a place for their neighbors to find sanctuary, to find God.

Verse 18 assures us that God remembers the needy and the poor - those who are all too often forgotten or called forgettable by culture and pop media in the brokenness of our world. It was really amazing to overlay maps of Chicago and see where the low-income areas were also the neighborhoods who receive the least funding for their public schools, where the train stations are stretched out over fifteen blocks or more and where there are fewer grocery stores, where public housing was torn down but new housing wasn't created, where children are dying from violence on the streets and the graduation rates plummet. Forget college; in the Bronzeville, Austin, or Englewood neighborhoods, even finishing high school becomes an accomplishment. However, what keeps people moving forward is the joy and hope that lies in God and in knowing that they have an identity as God's children that surpasses any label the world would stick on them. Their hope does not perish.

Missing

What don’t I do if I have to ride the bus from here to the train and catch another bus on the other end? Do I skip the early worship or sacrifice a good night’s sleep? Do I go places that mean another transfer, another route, another line or another walk? What do I miss when I’ve already spent fifteen hours on buses and trains and just want to sit and be still for a day. Maybe the groceries wait until tomorrow or we never get to the library. If I make it to the market, it’ll be the one closest to me, even if that means I can’t buy as much. But even if the prices are okay, what don’t I buy when I have to carry my bags? When the backs of my legs ache and my fingers cramp from trekking through the cold?

And what do I miss when I adopt the vacant look and stare out the window or bury my nose in my book instead of smiling and saying hello or talking to the person behind me in line? Smiles break open our masks of anonymity and of otherness. “Hello.” “Good morning.” “Thank you.” What does it cost me? If you were going to rob me, it would have happened already. Instead you pull the line for the stop ahead and help me find my way. You laugh with me as we begin a new day. At night, on the way home, we’re quieter, more weary and maybe more wary because the darkness envelops us as night falls and we’re still not home. 

And even when I get home, when I am a mama or a daddy, what do I miss? Excited stories about the school day or playground, anguished teenage narratives and dinner table conversations because we’re sapped from bobbing and weaving through the city streets. 

Part of my reflections of a two-week experience living in Chicago's Hyde Park, studying urban pastoral education and riding Chicago Transit everywhere.