“Do you indeed decree righteousn​ess, you rulers? Do you judge the peoples with equity?”

One of the Psalms appointed for today is Psalm 58 which seems very appropriate in a time when there is so much armed conflict:

 

Do you indeed decree righteousness, you rulers?

 do you judge the peoples with equity?

No; you devise evil in your hearts,

 and your hands deal out violence in the land.

The wicked are perverse from the womb;

 liars go astray from their birth.

They are as venomous as a serpent,

 they are like the deaf adder which stops its ears …

 

There is armed conflict in the Gaza and Israel, in Iraq, in the Ukraine and in other parts of the world.  The innocent of all faiths are suffering.  As of today, in the Gaza alone 1058 people have and 218 of the dead are children.  In Israel 46 people have died.

 

The BBC has reported that the fighting in the eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 1000 lives and nearly 300 innocent people died as their aircraft was shot down over the Ukraine.

 

Here is a link to what is going on in Iraq: Vicar of Baghdad: "They just go around and shoot the odd person dead."

 

The Psalmist rightly asks all of the rulers:  “Do you indeed decree righteousness, you rulers? Do you judge the peoples with equity?”  The Psalmist answers: “No.”  That answer is certainly the same on Monday, 28 July 2014, some 3000 years after the Psalmist wrote those words!

 

Our help is in God alone.  Please remember all of the people in war torn areas; lift them up in your prayers that they may have the strength to endure the days before them.

 

Let us pray: Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

 

THANK YOU TO LEE RUNION AND TO ROSE DANIELS AND TO EVERYONE ELSE WHO HELPED TO MAKE THE SUMMER ART PROGRAM, “THE ART OF LISTENING”, A SUCCESS. 

 

CALENDAR REMINDERS

 

St. Augustine’s Feast Day and the 130^th Anniversary of the establishment of the parish is Sunday, 24 August.

 

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, especially Lloyd Guidry and his family and Patricia Florence and her family.

 

Your servant in Christ,

 

Fr. Chester J. Makowski, Vicar

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550