Rather than subordinate our own ambitions and desires to God’s plan, we often close our ears and tune out his voice.

With the smartphone now functioning as an essential anatomical appendage, it is harder than it has ever been to make distinctions, to turn off the noise, to say “Enough.”

We have experienced God’s benevolent interventions in our own lives.

We are invited, today, to listen—and as the psalmist today colorfully puts it, God has even done us the courtesy of digging out our ears so that we can hear.

Even in our relationships with family and friends, forgiveness can be hard to come by.

Even when events are messy and motives are questionable and hardships abound, we must trust that God’s unknowable power is at work.

Most of us are so removed from agricultural realities that we fail fully to embrace the image of chaff in today’s psalm.

Do we still believe there are “evil spirits who prowl through the world, seeking the ruin of souls,” as the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel memorably phrases it?

Over against our human unreliability stand the rock-solid assurances of God.

Today and everyday we are invited to pray with the psalmist.