Psalm 74

As I read Psalms 73 and 74 I keep thinking of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian who survived concentrations camps in the Holocaust to become a highly acclaimed neurologist and psychiatrist. His experiences in the concentration camps taught him, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance” and, ““When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning).

The psalmist was trying to make sense out of the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of Israel. The psalmist was in deep thought about the meaning of life. He concluded that he, and Israel, had to accept responsibility for their actions. This is a continuing theme in Frankl’s writings. (Viktor Frankl once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.) Long before President Kennedy urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you . . .” Frankl wrote “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

The psalmist’s style of speaking directly to God was his way of demonstrating his recognition that it was God who was suffering for the sins of Israel. God’s creation of beauty and order is wounded deeply by the willful disobedience of humans.

Sē’lah

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What word or phrase in today’s reading of the Psalms

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Reflect on that word or phrase.

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Reading for July 15, 2012          Psalm 75