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Vindicate Me?

             The Lord will vindicate me; your love, Lord, endures forever— do not abandon the works of your hands. (Psalm 138:8)

Vindicate: clear (someone) of blame or suspicion; show or prove to be right, reasonable, or justified. {from Latin vindicationem (nominative vindicatio) "act of claiming or avenging," noun of action from past-participle stem of vindicare "lay claim to, assert; claim for freedom, set free; protect, defend; avenge" (related to vindicta "revenge"). This is held to be probably from vim dicare "to show authority," from vim, accusative of vis "force" (see vim) + dicare "to proclaim"}

            Some folks are quick to tell you that you shouldn’t act like you have to be right all the time. Of course, what at least some of those folks mean is that you are not permitted to ever be right because that interferes with their being right all the time. Sometimes, some claim it’s a sign of arrogance, but today’s verse is about God defending someone and proclaiming them free and avenging them. One possibility of vindication is what God did for Job, scolding Job’s “friends” for their words against Job.

`        Part of me wants to stand up and cheer. This is God as the Knight in Shining Armor, coming to inform those who have attacked me that I’ve been right. I know perfectly well that He’ll also stand with others against me, vindicating them when they’ve been right and I’ve been wrong, but the idea that someone – anyone, let alone Someone, taking my side leaves me at a loss for the right words. And the passage suggests to me that vindication is a normal human response.

          As a normal human response, it can be both good and evil. We can want to be vindicated because we want to be right, better, special, etc. We can also want to be vindicated because we desperately want to not get things (and especially not “everything”) wrong. Or because we believe what we say is true. And today’s verse suggests that it’s OK to ask God for vindication. We might not get the answer we like, or any answer for a long time, but we can ask.

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