On Pleading with the King

On Pleading with the King
Psalm 5

Tomorrow, South Sudan becomes a separate country, independent of northern Sudan. No one knows what the future will bring for it, but if you belong to South Sudan, you hope that it means an end to the conflict between the south and the north and to what you see as the oppression of the south by the north. While it is an oversimplification to think of the north as Muslim and the south as Christian (many people in the south adhere to traditional African religions), one can picture the Christians in the south and their leaders praying in the way Psalm 5 does. The president of (northern) Sudan has already been (in the words of the New York Times [July 8, 2011]) “author of the murderous war in Darfur,” the eastern part of Sudan. If readers of the Psalms in other parts of the world do not need to pray for themselves in the manner of Psalm 5, then such a psalm becomes the way we identify with our brothers and sisters who have the experience the psalm describes. We pray it on their behalf, not praying for “them” but thinking of them as “us.”...