How to Learn from the Poor

How to Learn from the Poor
Psalm 41: 1-12

As we arrived at church on Sunday, a homeless man named Alex who sometimes comes to church was sitting in the shade of the parish hall, drawing on a cigarette as he waited for the time of the service. During the service we read the story of the Canaanite woman who tries to get Jesus to heal her daughter, initially fails, but eventually succeeds. Alex was the one person in the congregation who responded with a gasp or an exclamation at appropriate moments in this astonishing story. When we came to the point in the service when we share prayer needs, Alex asked us to pray that that cigarette we saw him smoking would be his last. Alex was a blessing to me twice on Sunday: in his unmistakable interaction with the Scripture reading and in the simplicity of his prayer...
Psalm 41:13
An Interim Closing Act of Praise

The Psalter divides into five books, like the Torah, and with Psalm 41 we come to the end of Book One. There is no particular significance in making the transition at this point—it could have come after Psalm 40. The point is simply to mark the Psalter as resembling the Torah. So this act of praise is not actually part of Psalm 41 but is a kind of “Amen” to the first forty-one psalms...