Mtr Kelli Joyce

1 Hear my cry, O God, *
and listen to my prayer.
2 I call upon you from the ends of the earth
with heaviness in my heart; *
set me upon the rock that is higher than I.

Dear friends in Christ,

When I am overwhelmed or in distress, my instinct is to try to fix the problem. I've spent my life more or less believing that there are very few problems that can't be handled as long as you're clever and willing to work hard. This is a common instinct, I think - we see the good that human ingenuity and dedication have done for society and the world, and it gets easy to put our trust in them.

Social progress and science and creativity are wonderful, and they are gifts to us from God, to be used for the good of all God's people. But there are things that they simply can't do for us. There are things that no amount of cleverness or hard work will enable us to fix under our own power. There are things that only God can do.

This is what I think of when I read the words of the Psalmist, pleading to God, "set me upon the rock that is higher than I!" The unashamed humility of coming before the Creator of the universe and saying "Please, take care of me, I need you" is striking. Instead of pretending that there is nothing higher than we are, this Psalm provides us with an example of what it looks like to put our ultimate faith in the only place where it rightly belongs - the Living God, who made us and knows us and deeply loves us.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli