Man of Prayer

So today’s reading (Psalm 108 & Psalm 109) has kind of a peculiar psalm. The psalms are just people pouring their heart out to God, and in Psalm 109 David pours out his contempt for his enemies. He prays things against them that I assume he was later embarrassed of, and I would be mortified to pray or hear someone else pray.

The peculiar thing is that David opens the psalm by mentioning these enemies and their attacks on him and then he says, “but I am a man of prayer.” And that kind of gives you the impression that David is going to rise above their attacks, but he then spends the next twenty-four verses spewing hatred and evil wishes to God about them. And my initial reaction was, “Well, you didn’t really rise above, did you Mr. Man of Prayer?”

But then I thought, “Well, maybe he did.” If he wasn’t a man of prayer, maybe he would have physically attacked his enemies, or perhaps he would have spewed his hatred by slandering them to other people. I mean, what he did do, with his hatred towards his enemies, is make it a matter of prayer.

Then I thought about me, and you. Are we men and women of prayer? Does being people of prayer constrain our sinful reactions to things? When we have crap in our heart, do we make it a matter of prayer and unload it on God, or do we unload it on the world?