Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

On Reading Psalm 3

On Reading Psalm 3 You watcher of men, You monitor of women, You supervisor of boys and girls, You who watch and know and observe, You are the one from whom no secret can be hid. You know when we sit down and when we rise up, You know when we go out and when we come in, You know our great trust in you and our gratitude toward you. But you also know our anxiety before you, our need to hide, our readiness to deceive, Yet you are "the one from whom no secret can be hid." So we pray that we may be "full of truth" even as you are "full of grace and truth"; We pray for freedom to tell you the full truth of our life: Our hopes that are too large to imagine, Our fears that are too deep to manage, Our hates that are too hot to act upon, Our loneliness that is too heavy to bear, Our resentments that eat at us, Our doubts that you care or will care enough. Make us truth-tellers that we may move beyond our endless circles of deception and deception... 152 plain enough to address you, simple enough to "will one thing," honest enough to utter and move on having sounded ourselves fully to you. Amen. June 19, 2002 (Montreat) 153 ...