Author: Rabbi David Krishef

Psalm 6

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“Adonai, turn!” (6:5)

The idea that God changes is challenging to many people. If God changes, then the earlier pronouncements of God must not have been correct – therefore, God is not perfect. If God was perfect, then God would never need to change. However, God’s covenant and relationship is with us, with human beings, and perforce needs to change because we change. God’s changes, then, are motivated by who we are at any given moment. God’s malleability, therefore, is a model for us. If God can change and respond to us, then we can change and respond not only to God, but to the people around us. Where do you need to change?

Psalm 5

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“Let them fall by their own devices.” (5:11)

Most of our failures are not caused by other people sabotaging our lives. Most of the time when we run into problems, if we look carefully we’ll see that we are the primary cause of our difficulties. When we fail, it is most often because we didn’t sufficiently prepare or because we didn’t pay attention to the signs that were trying to warn about the “bridge out ahead!” We blithely continued on, ignoring the warnings, until we drove right off the bridge. And then we screamed all the way down, blaming everyone except ourselves for our plight, which was caused by our own lack of attention.

Psalm 4

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“Ponder it on your bed, and be still.” (4:5)

Rare is the day on which all of our work, in the broadest sense of the word, gets done. We nearly always leave something undone, something we could have done better. That’s OK – it’s part of being human. Being human, though, is just a bit less than being Divine – which means that while messing up is expected, so is self-analysis. As you lie in bed at night, calm your breathing and review your day. Choose something that could have gone better. Even if 90% of the problem was caused by someone else’s mistake, identify one thing that you contributed to the problem and one thing that you could have done to avert or lessen it.

Psalm 3

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“I lie down and sleep and wake again.” (3:6)

We sleep to recharge ourselves so that we can wake up in the morning with energy, ready to embrace any and all possibilities that the day might present to us, with a smile and a positive attitude. It is a blessing of the highest order to be able to lie down and know that we’ve given our best effort over the course of the day. When we can lie down with satisfaction for how we’ve conducted ourselves and with no regrets for the things that we have left undone or the things that we have to apologize for tomorrow, we can sleep the sleep of the righteous.

Psalm 2

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“Break the cords of their yoke …” (2:3)

A mature adult is never completely free from responsibilities, but we choose what yokes we wear. Some yokes are harder to remove than others. The yokes of addiction to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs physically attach themselves to our shoulders, whereas the yokes of addiction to shopping or our iDevices rest so comfortably and naturally that we are loathe to remove them. The yoke is the device that drives the cart. We can choose to take on the yokes of family, service to God and community, and friends first and let those activities be our priorities, rather than yoking ourselves to other things that distract us from what should be most important.