Psalm 22:25-31 (NRSV)
Read Psalm 22:25-31 on biblegateway.com
Verse 25From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
Verse 26The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!
Verse 27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
Verse 28For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.
Verse 29To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
Verse 30Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
Verse 31and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.
Devotion
The anguished cry of Good Friday (Ps. 22:1) is in our rearview mirror. This psalm of lament has transitioned to praise, sorrow is now joy and celebration. Not until I visited El Salvador did I really understand what it meant to live in poverty. I discovered a community poor in possessions but rich in spirit and God’s love.
The lament for a tragic civil war, always in their rearview mirror, is now a song of hope for deliverance into a better life. Their anthem is Guillermo Cuellar’s song “Cuando el pobre crea en el pobre, Ya Podemos cantar ¡Libertad!” (“When the poor believe in the poor, We can sing freedom!”) This cry, arising from the pain of Good Friday and turned into hope by Easter, shows on the faces of Salvadoran children eager to learn, and in their parents, who know “if we love one another, God lives in us.”
Prayer
Gracious God, turn my lament to praise, let me ever proclaim deliverance to all peoples. Amen.