A wound in the earth

Psalm 18
Journal entry dated March 19, 2005

"I ground them fine as dust in the wind; I trampled them like mud in the streets."

Psalm 18 is a psalm of vengeance, unabashed in its glorification of violent retribution. It is the song of triumph of the king who has killed his foes and brought nations into subjection.

How to pray this?

Somehow, I keep going back to the images of dust and mud. The image of earth. Dust and mud are both images of fruitless soil, earth that has been trampled until nothing grows there. When the rains come, the earth turns to mud and erodes away without the rootweb of vegetation to hold it. When the heat comes, it bakes dry and blows away. Dust and mud are images of erosion. They are images of a wound in the earth, of a place where nothing grows.

And the only way to heal this wound is to stop trampling on it, to change our paths, to change our way of walking.