Psalm 72

This morning I have apples stewing on the stove. Last night I cooked an old-fashioned stew of potatoes and green beans. I added some matzo balls just because I love them.  I do love cooking in the fall and winter, and lately, I have been able to return to a prayer that deeply feeds my life; the prayer of baking a little something on Sunday to take to church. When I can do that regularly, my rhythm in the kitchen changes. When my rhythm in the kitchen changes, so does my life.  

 

Psalm 72 is a psalm for a king. While I certainly do not see the one who was elected as a "Messiah-King", I can pray this psalm for him. 

  

Lord, give a deep-felt sense of justice to the Messiah-King, 

an awareness of the sustaining balances of the the world. 

And this I pray so the people will be ruled on earth with equity, 

and all the poor will no longer suffer pain. 

I pray that from the mountain tops to the foundations of the earth 

prosperity will come to peoples everywhere, 

and from the foothills there shall flow a source of peace.

And may his acts defend the desperate, needy ones, 

and crushing out oppression, rescue all the poor. 

May it never be the mighty ones whom he hears first, 

but the poor and needy of the earth. 

All helpless ones and those alone, 

and all who cry in desperation and are oppressed, 

May he truly care for lowly ones 

and hold the life of each one dear. 

May he take those broken 

by our violence and make them new again.

And may all the blood that's ever shed 

in waste become for him a hallowed thing, 

and every life deemed precious and a sacred good.    

 

Psalm 72, abridged 

Ancient Songs Sung Anew 

Lynn C. Bauman