A PSALM TO A GOD WHO IS ONLY GOOD
Lord, our God, we thank you
because You have revealed yourself in Jesus
as wholly good.
In this, you do not look like us;
and you are different from all the images
we create, trying to be yours.
You love everything you created;
And establish an everlasting covenant with us
that nothing can break.
You do get angry at our sins
or retaliates against those who do evil;
you don’t kill those who kill
but protects them, like Cain, against their avengers.
For You are entirely good
and send the sun on the just and the unjust.
You love each one of us
and do not want the sinner’s death
but rather, that we convert and live.
The pardon all the sins
and invites us all to sit at the same table
from those who arrived at last minute
to those who started working since dawn.
We thank you because in everything,
you show yourself as entirely good.
You are so far from sin
so alien to all the mechanisms of evil
that you can not even punish the offenders
so violence will not generate more violence.
You have no power to kill
because this is not a divine power.
Your power is love without measure
creating, healing, forgiving
until we triumph over death.
Your justice is not to measure or evaluate
but only to make us just
until we are all reconcile to justice in this life.
Our God, we’re thankful
thou you are our Father,
and since you have made us in your image
Give us a generous heart just like yours.
(Peter Wheat, Caracas, 1983)
Translation and Picture: Claudio Carvalhaes
