Comfort in Papers

Here at Seabury, we are in the final week of our term, which means lots of work to do. I am a classic procrastinator - I write papers the night before they are due. I seem to be incapable of writing them any sooner - I just can't concentrate on them until I'm up to the wire. I've really always had this problem. Anyway, the latest procrastination project was a paper on Psalm 139. I have never spent much time with the Psalms for some reason. I like to think that its because I am a singer, and can't stand having songs be put onto a page without music. But thats thinking a bit too highly of my motives, I'm afraid. This psalm is now my favorite though. It balances images of God as all-knowing and all-present for the psalmist, and then has the psalmist asking for the destruction of enemies. It is quite jarring to read really. As I read some commentaries and such, I decided to approach the psalm as a kind of prayer tool. If God knows our every thought and inner being as this psalm says - then it is no longer shocking for us to express our deepest, often most violent feelings to God. God already knows everything we can put forth - I saw this as a call to honesty in prayer. Perhaps it was a bit self-serving, but hey, the paper is done, and I now have a favorite psalm.
And, once all these other papers are done, I will be figuring out the comments thing. Promise. Now, enough procrastinating for tonight!