I’LL DO IT MY WAY

Mission statements are a feature of contemporary corporate life. In a few sentences, companies articulate the reason for their existence and their business vision. They are also increasingly part of the job recruitment process. Candidates are asked to write their own mission statements, expressing their own sense of vision and purpose.

This psalm belongs to a sub-category called the ‘royal psalms,’ where the voice belongs to the king in Jerusalem. In it he declared his own mission statement: the values and behaviors he intended to pursue as king. Verse 2 is particularly fascinating: ‘I will be careful to lead a blameless life.’ After asserting this intention, he pleaded with God to come to him. Brueggemann and Bellinger,** in their commentary on the psalms, call this an act of insistent hope. The king was looking to God to help with delivery of his promises to be a man of integrity. It is said that the famous eighteenth-century Welsh preacher, Christmas Evans, had a similar practice. While traveling and praying on horseback, he would occasionally dismount and build a pile of rocks to show that God had come to him and given him a promise.  The rocks were a sign of that commitment.