Psalm 55

Psalm 55
"Give ear to my prayer, O God,
and hide yourself not from my plea of mercy!
Attend to me, and answer me;
I am restless in my complaint and I moan,
because of the noise of the enemy,
because of the oppression of the wicked.
For they drop trouble upon me;
the terrors of death have fallen on me
Fear and trembling come over me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say "Oh that I had wings like a dove!"
I would fly away and be at rest;
yes, I would wander far away;
I would lodge myself in the wilderness."

Who is our enemy? Who is the one we are saying this psalm to? Right now, sitting in my house in Freetown, and as I look out across the edge of the windowsills, I see that the enemy is ourselves, humanity. The streets of Freetown are trash-strewn and deteriorating underneath the feet of people who long for more, yet don't have time or energy to distract themselves on it, especially when simply living is so demanding. I wonder what this place looked like before the West came, equating shiny stones in the earth to billions of dollars to be used for the already rich, the already engorged. And I wonder what this place was like before the automobile came, demanding the paved roads that suffocate everything, as they spew their lungs of sulfur and smoke. The natural world here is vibrant, magnificent. There is a tree perched on a hill where we walk regularly to and from Krio lessons and meetings. It must be centuries old. The magnitude and vibrancy of that tree looks down on and laughs at the mad schemes for money, power, control, effeciency and even strife of the civilization that has grown up around it. When I think about America, with its form-cut paved roads and strip malls (may as well be strip-mining) I see the enemy humanity has become there also.

"Because of the noise of my enemies, because of the oppression of the wicked." We so often look so sharply for our enemies outside of our own selves that we fail to detect our growing affluence and despondancy to the natural world. I feel the noise and evil of our wicked selfishness on both sides of the ocean, East and West, and I long to fly away and I say "Oh that I had wings of a dove, I would fly away and be at rest, yes I would wander far way, I would lodge myself in the wilderness."

As I write this, bearing the burden of these thoughts, I prepare to go out amidst the slums, the trash-strewn streets and murky, coal waters, filled with the plastic scum of a people who have forgotten the place of God's earth in their lives. I go not with a sense of fatality or defeatism, but with the sense that however hard it may be, the gates of hell will not prevail against God's mercy and his beautiful creations. Amen to God.