Good comments here Brad.  Gave me food for thought.  So often I glaze over
passages like that as I think that maybe it doesn't exactly apply.  But you
certainly drew some good points here.  Thanks for taking the time to share.

Vicki

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad Dunse" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2004 8:10 AM
Subject: Psalms 5


> Reading Psalms 5 this morning, and while reading I had to stop at two
> points. Starting the text at verse 8 it reads...
>
> O LORD, lead me in Your righteousness because of my foes; Make Your way
> straight before me. There is nothing reliable in what they say; Their
> inward part is destruction itself. Their throat is an open grave;...
> This is point one which I stopped. David referred to his foe's throats as
> open graves. Does that cut to the chase? It immediately rang of death, at
> which at the bottom of a grave lies death, and in like manner Jesus said
> out of the mouth spews the contents of the heart, the throat also leads to
> a death, an open grave for a dead heart towards God. A very strange but
> effective and concise statement.
>
> Reading on...
>
> They flatter with their tongue. Hold them guilty, O God; By their own
> devices let them fall! In the multitude of their transgressions thrust
them
> out, For they are rebellious against You.
>
> I began to think of our times of today, the wickedness that goes on, and
> how sometimes when we hear  of wicked vile acts, or have been the
recipient
> of wicked or wrongful acts by others, how we become angry, how we become
> vengeful, and we conjure up a just deserving punishment according to our
> own designs, yet take no action on that which we've conjured up for them.
> And, while in the midst of my thinking on this type of thought pattern,
and
> envisioning such times in my life and even the news I hear in the media
> today, of people I do not even know, yet share their grief, I think very
> much like David did above. I begin to think of what they deserve for such
> wrongful doings. I wonder how someone could do such things to another
human
> being. I think of the selfishness that prevails and goes before them in
all
> they are doing in these acts. The dismissal of other people's value in
> life, of life, or of it's joy and enjoyment.  I find myself just like
> David, wishing for specific punishments, and I think how David and I are
> alike in thought, until I look at and realize why I think why I think. I
> project the punishment of these wicked people to satisfy my own just
> designs, to bring a semi-closure to these things that offend me according
> to my values, but David... David's motivation  was as he stated in his
last
> line of the comment... "For they are rebellious against You."
>
> How selfish I am even in glory of just punishment of those who work
> wickedness and inequities.
>
> Brad
>
>
> If you're not living where you are, you're not living at all