How can I be a witness for Christ in my life today? How can I do good today or seek peace and pursue it? What does it mean to “do good,” anyway? It’s a question I often confront, especially when I encounter a person on the street who holds out a used paper cup for money, or when I visit a friend, who no longer knows me, in her nursing home. What good am I doing?

“Do good,” the psalm says. And “seek peace.” I can turn myself into knots of self-recrimination over my lack of goodness. But turning in on myself can lead to a kind of inner violence. The psalm is telling me to pursue peace while doing good. The wise psalmist of ancient times says to me, now in the 21st-century, that inner peace must go hand in hand with the desire to give myself to others.