I love the Psalms.  They are ancient Israel’s hymnal and prayer book.  They express the gamut of human experience and emotions.  They express it all: the good, the bad, and the too ugly to speak in public.  Some of the stuff the psalmists wrote was beautiful and inspiring.  Some would make you shudder or hang your head in shame because they said out loud the things you won’t even say clearly to yourself.

Psalm 101 begins: “I will sing of mercy and of justice; to you, O Lord I will sing.  I will study the way that is blameless.  When shall I attain it?”  This is a noble sentiment – a good way to open a prayer to God, but the psalm quickly devolves into a rather self-righteous denunciation of other people’s shortcomings.  He concludes with this vow: “Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all evildoers from the city of the Lord.” 

Why is it that when we develop an interest in becoming more holy ourselves we can so easily shift our focus from our own need to grow in holiness and start noticing everyone else’s sins?  Maybe getting riled up about the wrong other people do is just easier than trying to root out our own sinful ways that cling so closely.

You know, it’s a good thing to care about holiness and there’s nothing wrong with being offended by the evil around us and within us.  God’s mercy doesn’t mean that sin and evil don’t matter.  It’s not as though God is an overly indulgent parent who lets the kids run wild.  God is just and God’s justice sets things right.  That means that ultimately evil cannot stand and that cruelty and selfishness are God’s enemies.

We should oppose sin and evil when we see it, but the first place to look is in ourselves. 

Prayer:  Holy One, our sin and imperfection is too hard to look at, and so we tend to look at the faults of others instead.  Grant us grace to see ourselves and others as you see us:  as sinners for whom Christ died.  Amen.