Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Psalm 119:153 – Rescue Me

    Psalm 119:153 – Rescue Me

    Consider my affliction and rescue me,
    for I do not forget your instruction.

    There are many ways one could read this prayer, but one is surely as a proposed bargain with God, or perhaps a request for the reward that one feels should come with service. “Look, Lord, I’ve been doing all this stuff you’ve commanded me to do, and things aren’t going so well. Fix it!”

    That’s not precisely what the Psalmist was trying to evoke. More likely he’s speaking from his belief that God’s instructions are right. They instruct us to do right things. Justice therefore suggests that as a result of doing right, good things should happen.

    In fact, the books of Samuel & Kings generally speak this way. You do right, good things happen. You do evil, bad things happen. To a certain extent, this is quite true. The Bible writers, however, recognized that sometimes that’s not precisely what happens. The book of Job speaks of this. Job is presented as righteous, yet he is very much afflicted. Job could have made this verse his prayer.

    As I thought about this verse I was led back to thinking about what is a “good” prayer. There are lots of prayers presented in scripture, many in the Psalms. Those prayers take various positions with relation to prayer. Today’s verse will sometimes make a sensitive Christian uncomfortable. How is it that one can present good works as a reason for God’s blessing? Does God owe you something? (That would be another subject.)

    I was reminded of when I taught a class on the Old Testament using the book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?, by my undergraduate professor and advisor, Dr. Alden Thompson. His final chapter is titled “What kind of prayers would you publish if you were God?” It’s an excellent question.

    We were discussing Psalm 137:8-9. Here we find the Jews in Babylon, remembering their homeland and mourning their exile. They conclude with “Blessed is the one who returns to you (Babylon) the treatment you gave to us. Blessed is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against a rock.”

    I ask the class to discuss what they thought about that, and directed them to think of how they would feel if an enemy occupied their city and ad killed their children. People were generally saying that it’s wrong to seek revenge, and thus they would not want the same thing to happen to the enemy’s children as had happened to theirs.

    After a bit an elderly lady in the class, a very gentle person, spoke up. “I think we’re all lying,” she said. “I think if we’re honest, we’d want to do to their children what they did to ours.” She went on to hope she wouldn’t carry this out, but she thought the desire would be there.

    And this leads to what Alden Thompson says about these prayers: They’re honest. They’re real. That’s important because the Psalms give us permission to speak honestly to God.

    It’s easy to try to conform our words to what we believe God wants us to think. We put on the holy face and pretend that we are calm, virtuous, and always embody the Golden Rule. We want to present the image that we’re very close to Matthew 5:48 – perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.

    In our minds, this means that God really should make things work for us. We’re good people. We have the righteous, joyful mask and everything! So we would pray this prayer with a certain amount of aggrieved self-righteousness. “Lord, how can you possibly treat your best-behaved child in this way? Get me out of here!” If we prayed this verse, it would be with a haughty look, and a proud heart.

    Now if you’ve read the rest of the Psalm, I think it’s hard to accuse the Psalmist of that in this case. Yet I think there’s a reason for this verse. If that’s what you’re thinking, go right ahead and explain it to God. God already knows. God will not be shocked by your attitude.

    On the other hand, God isn’t necessarily going to follow up by snatching you out of whatever trouble you’re in.

    What can you tell God honestly today, and admit to yourself at the same time?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:152 – Eternally Varied

    Psalm 119:152 – Eternally Varied

    I’ve known this for a long time about your testimonies:
    You established them from ancient times.

    This is one of the cases in which my use of standard translations for each of the “law words” in this Psalm looks just a little off, but I’m sticking with it. Of course, it is quite possible to read this as including the record of God’s creation in which case we do learn from creation itself about how firmly founded God’s law is right from the beginning.

    I tend to blur the boundary that theologians prefer between special and general revelation. I think that potentially everything reveals God, provided that we are looking. The revelation provided in scripture or in prophetic words and experiences differs in approach and purpose, but not in quality.

    This applies to study of natural sciences for example. I would say that good scientific study provides potentially accurate information about that natural world, and is more likely to do so accurately than scripture.

    Hey! What? Are you speaking against the value of scripture? No. I’m saying that scripture does not have teaching us science as its purpose. We have the natural world and the minds God graciously provided us to study the natural world. The way to learn about these things is to “read” them in the way that is provided.

    This is another way that we can learn from “testimony” about how God has founded his rules. We see the record of the universe through devices such as the James Webb Telescope. We see the history of this world in the rocks. In studying these things we can learn not only about the things themselves, but about the God who created them.

    And note that I’m not here debating special creation and evolution. No matter what the process, God is the creator, and we can see the stability of what God has decreed for the entire universe.

    So in “reading” the universe I can learn that God has established his rules firmly “from ancient times.” God is not a God of chaos but of stability. It is in observing these things, however, that I also see God as a God of freedom and not of micromanaged control. Here others might disagree with my reading, both scientifically and theologically.

    Nonetheless, in the dance of stars and galaxies, where some even collide or pass through one another with a great deal of destructive force, I see a game with firm, stable rules, but played by elements with considerable options in how those rules are applied.

    And I bring this up because it is precisely this kind of disagreement about interpreting nature in terms of God’s presence in it and relationship to it as a reason why we need to get the real answer from written scripture. We need to get that all settled much more clearly.

    Except that we don’t. Get it settled clearly, that is.

    We get so many different interpretations of the Bible that it’s really hard to even catalog all the things that may claim the title “what the Bible teaches.” It doesn’t do any real good to explain to people that the problem is that they are all wrong, whereas I, of course, am right.

    I would suggest that if God wanted a unanimity in understanding either creation or the written word, God would have done things quite differently. “Differently” might have involved either different people, a different universe, or a different written word, or more likely all three. I suspect God didn’t do it the way we have it by mistake, so I take it God wants us to have to wade through the variety and do our best to interpret.

    I’m still going to argue for what I believe scripture teaches. I think that’s a good idea. I hope you do too, even if, or especially if you disagree with me. I think that disagreement, done right, can create growth. And all of that goes back to the God who created this all precisely as God desired it, not as I desire it.

    In disagreeing today with others, as you doubtless will, consider the God who made all those diverse wonders of nature, people, and viewpoints possible.

    Rejoice! Revel in the diversity God has created.

  • Psalm 119:151 – Near

    Psalm 119:151 – Near

    You are near, LORD,
    and your commands are true.

    One of the interesting paradoxes of Christian theology is the God who is at once very near and also distant. Personal and accessible, yet so far above as to be incomprehensible.

    Paul talks refers to this in calling us to “know the lover of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). We have many such paradoxes in Christianity, including what I consider the most critical one, the incarnation. Jesus is 100% human and 100% God, and yet is one person.

    In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, the law is described as being near. It’s not in heaven, inaccessible, or beneath the sea, also inaccessible. It’s there. It’s available. It’s not too difficult or beyond our reach. And yet the story of scripture is, in many was, the story of people failing to keep the law, even in the most basic sense.

    Yet again the Psalmist speaks of God having knowledge that is too wonderful for him, beyond his grasp (Psalm 139:6).

    What I see here is God’s presence in our lives, working out divine purposes in and through us. It’s accessible, to the extent we can comprehend it, but one of the things we should comprehend is that we don’t comprehend fully. We comprehend enough for our lives. We comprehend enough to know there is much beyond our comprehension.

    It’s not a bad idea to realize the limitations of our knowledge. In fact, it’s a very good idea.

    Think today of things that you don’t understand. Then imagine a future in which you comprehend more, bit by bit.

    What little bit will you add to your store of knowledge today?

  • Psalm 119:150 – Conspiracy!

    Psalm 119:150 – Conspiracy!

    My enemies have formed a conspiracy against me,
    they are far from your instruction!

    Who is it that tends to get angry at what you are doing?

    That may seem like a question with negative assumptions, but you can learn quite a lot about someone by looking at the nature of their enemies. You can learn a great deal about yourself by looking for the folks who don’t like you.

    The problem with this approach is that it is often difficult to know just what it is about your actions that is making enemies. I have been aware of cases in which I made an enemy, not because of what I really intended to accomplish, but because of the abrasive way I went about accomplishing that. It would be easy for me to assume that the person(s) who became annoyed hated the good things I was trying to do, and thus became my enemies. In fact, it’s frequently the case that the way I’m going about trying to do good is stirring up opposition.

    Psalm 119 doesn’t identify David as the author, but David is often viewed as “the Psalmist.” David himself could be an abrasive character and make suboptimal decisions in how he went about things. Read the story of Absalom’s rebellion and you’ll see any number of cases in which David managed to rub people the wrong way, but wasn’t really aiming at something good.

    I’ve seen pastors come into a church with some very good ideas, and then see a wall of opposition built up against them because they are stepping on beloved traditions of that church, often without good preparation for necessary changes. “Machine-gunning the sacred cows,” is how one pastor of my acquaintance referred to this practice.

    Our verse presents a very clear distinction. We have bad guys who are coming after the writer. These bad guys are far from God’s law. Good guys and bad guys. Clear boundary lines. If you’re a good guy you know who to support.

    In reality, we rarely run into such a situation. We are rarely proposing perfect plans and our opponents are rarely opposing them because they are terrible people who know nothing of God’s law. Rather, things get tangled up in the gray area.

    And this makes our verse all that much more important. We should examine our activities to see if we are, in fact, working in accordance with God’s laws. We should also look carefully at our enemies, as horrible as they may appear to us, and ask if they are really the kind of reprobates we imagine them to be.

    If we can recognize the good and the bad in ourselves and others, we can often find much better ways to work together and accomplish God’s work.

    How can you make your approach less abrasive today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:149 – Mercy and Life

    Psalm 119:149 – Mercy and Life

    Hear my voice according to your lovingkindness (hesed).
    Oh LORD, give me life according to your judgments.

    This is a very interesting verse. I think it is also challenging.

    We see two aspects of God’s grace and mercy working together here. First, the psalmist asks for mercy from God, and so should we. Listen to us as one who is merciful.

    But what is the result of this mercy? We often think mercy as the part where the authority cancels punishment or removes other negative effects of something one has done. But here mercy leads to the next part, giving life, and this life is according to God’s judgments. Those judgments call on us to be merciful. (See Hosea 6:6 in the Hebrew scriptures.) Jesus used this very concept in the beatitudes, with Matthew 5:7: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”

    But this goes back to the call of Abraham in Genesis 12, where Abraham is told that God will bless him and others will be blessed through him.

    It’s easy to get this in reverse. We like to feel that we earn things. But the starting point is receiving God’s mercy, and one of the results is that we will learn to become merciful ourselves. We can think of this as a special action by God, but I would suggest that it is built into the fabric of the universe God created. We find this as the law of sowing and reaping. If we sow mercy, we reap mercy. That is, we help create an atmosphere in which mercy rules.

    Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged,” should likely be read in a similar sense. Don’t sow judgment and condemnation. Sow grace and forgiveness. Do this because you have received grace, and do it because grace is a good thing, and you can spread it to others. One of the best ways for someone to learn of God’s grace is to see God’s grace working in one of God’s professed (and hopefully real) followers.

    When we cry out to God, as this section of the Psalm has been describing, God doesn’t merely waive a penalty for things we have done. Yes, God does that. But God does much more. God begins to work, according to God’s judgment, on giving us life.

    And in all this we become partners with God in creating this life and this atmosphere of mercy and caring. We’re not God’s partners because we came with something new to contribute. Rather, we can give because we received.

    I want to add something the Psalm is not addressing. Mercy and caring are not economic goods. That means they are not scarce. You can care about additional people without running out. Caring about one person doesn’t mean you have to despise another. All people, not just the ones you or I happen to like, can receive God’s mercy and God’s care. And all people should receive our care.

    Who can you have mercy on today as God has had mercy on you?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI. First try, too!)

  • Psalm 119:148 – Meditating

    Psalm 119:148 – Meditating

    My eyes stay open during the night
    to meditate on your word.

    It’s nice on the 148th day of a series of meditations to have a verse (really another verse) about meditating.

    I will mention again what I said yesterday regarding the time and circumstances. Look for the time and place you can meditate. Don’t expect that you have to duplicate what is working for someone else. If you are getting a good night’s sleep, don’t imagine that your spirituality is substandard, and hope for sleep loss in order to be more holy.

    There are some things that are important about meditating on God’s word. We often start and unfortunately also often stop with exegesis, with getting a historical understanding of the data. Knowing what various prophets or kings did in the far past is important, but it is most important as a foundation for understanding your present relationship with God and your present calling. That involves more than historical data.

    For me the time reading the Bible is important to most other aspects of my life. It is a time when I can receive new light, when I pray, when I find strength for my next task, when I can feel God’s presence.

    The history is important. We should always be anchored in what the text actually says and what it meant when first spoken. But as believers today, we need to understand the application to the moment. That often goes well beyond that historical study.

    Here are some of those things I find are important:

    1. There is no shortcut. It takes time. This is not just time to read reference works, but time to let the text sink in.
    2. It takes both extensive and intensive reading. Don’t look down on the fast reader or on the one involved with nit-picky details. Both extremes have value. Try to incorporate different ways of approaching the text.
    3. It is part of worship. Meditating on God’s word brings you closer to God.
    4. It should be corporate, i.e., the study of the Bible should not be just about your individual time and your individual view. Test your results against what others learn.
    5. It should be individual. While working with others is important, learning to hear from God yourself is also critical. Be tested by the crowd. Don’t be led by the crowd.
    6. The Bible itself is more important than commentary. Put some emphasis on reading the Bible.
    7. There is value in those who have studied before. Let them help expand your vision and understanding, but don’t let their views replace learning from the text yourself.
    8. Have time for action. When you read about helping those less fortunate or about testifying to your faith in Jesus, you need to also pause to take action.

    I love this Psalm. I’m enjoying every verse. But this set of meditations is just one approach.

    What will you learn from scripture today?

  • Psalm 119:147 – Before Dawn

    Psalm 119:147 – Before Dawn

    I got up before dawn and cried out.
    I put my hope in your words.

    I’ve said in some of these posts that there were many ways I could go, but, of course, I choose one. With today’s text, though there are doubtless a number of ways I could go, I really kept thinking of one thing: What’s with the early morning thing?

    Many people talk about their morning devotions, and emphasize prayer before you get up, and the importance of meeting God as you begin your day. This is supposed to make your day better. One of the side effects of this emphasis on morning devotions is that many who are not morning people simply decide devotions are not for them.

    Let me start with the procedure that I have used in producing these meditations. It starts in the evening, generally shortly after I go to bed. I read and begin thinking about the text I’ll write on the next evening. Then I look back at it through the day, especially if, as has happened multiple times, I actually forget which verse I’m meditating on while I’m working. In the evening I write my post on the text and schedule it to be published the next day at 7 am, at which point I will be meditating on the next one.

    Any number of times, this procedure has failed me. I’ve been so tired some evenings that I went to sleep without looking at the text first. A couple of times, I’ve forgotten until after work, and started meditating around dinner time. Once I completely failed in following my procedure, and sat down to write about the text and read it at the same time. Oddly enough, I still found a meditation, even though it was “speed meditation”!

    While I like a morning prayer time, that time is infrequently the most important time of prayer for me in the day. For me there will be various times during work. Lunch time is one of the better times for reading scripture. Prayer is more likely to come multiple times during the work day at my desk. I’m pretty sure a strong majority of my prayer time over the last 30 years has occurred at my desk at work.

    I believe the psalmist when he said he got up before dawn and cried out. I believe that was a good thing for him. But everyone approaches their day differently. The pattern we impose on our meditations can be itself a work, and a dead tradition.

    I would suggest spending some time in prayer and meditation at any time that strikes you as valuable. Then watch what happens. I have found that if I don’t take breaks during the day and do something to keep my spirit in shape, the day will go badly. I have found it doesn’t matter if I pray right at the moment I get up. Now sometimes I do, because I feel called to pray about something specific.

    No matter when you call out to God, you can apply the second half of this verse and hope in the divine words, whether on the pages of scripture or spoken to you in your heart.

    What time will you spend with God today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:146 – Save Me

    Psalm 119:146 – Save Me

    I have called out to you! Save me!
    that I may keep your testimonies.

    We can miss the point of God saving us in two very different ways. First, we can see God’s salvation as a simple ticket out of our current situation. This applies whether we are being saved from a potentially deadly accident or ultimately from our sins. Second, we can see God’s salvation as setting us on our feet so that we can move forward and get it right ourselves.

    Neither of these gets the message. God’s call opens to us the possibility of being holy. There is no possibility outside of that. Further, God’s call puts God in the driver’s seat, making us into the people we were designed to be.

    We read about this in Romans 8:29-30:

    For those whom he foreknew, he also determined to be the same in form as the image of his son, so that he could be the firstborn of many brethren. And those he determined, he also called, and those he called, he also make righteous, and those he made righteous, he also glorified.

    As a note to those who may see my translation “determined,” rather than predestined as a more Wesleyan translation here, I think the verse itself makes it clear that we’re talking about God’s action, and by grammar, “determined” comes before “called.” Dealing with this theological detail is not within the cope of this post.

    What is within the scope is that the initial call invites entrance into a process, all of which is accomplished by God, all the way to final glory. In other words when we cry out “Save me!” we’re inviting God to take us on a complete journey. That call is the one opening to actually observe God’s law. That too comes as God’s gift.

    It’s also outside the scope of this post to discuss why we actually come to cry out in the first place. Suffice it to say I believe that even that is God’s gift, right along with our very life.

    Crying out to God is a serious thing. You’re entering a one way street, heading out on a ride to eternity.

    Are you ready for the ride?

  • Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    Psalm 119:145 – Answer Me

    I cried out with all my heart.
    Answer me, LORD!
    I will observe your statutes.

    If you have spent any time in prayer, you have likely spent time wondering if an answer was coming, and if it was coming, when would that be.

    This is not just our experience in prayer, but our experience in almost any relationship. The time between a request and response seems very long.

    I suspect this is inevitable. Everything takes time, but we like to see results immediately. Waiting in line is difficult for us. We wonder why the line doesn’t move faster, or why the store doesn’t take action to open more checkout stations.

    Near my home there is a railroad track that leads into a nearby chemical factory. Frequently we have trains going in and out of the plant, often adding more loaded cars over a period of time. As a result, one can wait quite a long time for these trains to get out of the way. Traffic can line up for a long ways down the road on either side.

    I am not so patient. I’ll frequently take a detour around the train, crossing the track some ways away. Sometimes this gets me to my destination faster, but frequently by the time I’ve completed my detour, I find that the traffic has dissipated, and I took longer getting around the delay than I would have taken just living through it.

    There’s this natural desire to make things happen if they aren’t happening. We’d like everything to work on our timetable. But when we’re waiting on God and going on our own detour it’s possible that, like I do with the train, we might miss what’s going on because we’re so busy working our way around. We are seeming to accomplish things when we’re just occupying time on detours.

    With the psalmist, we cry out with our whole heart. We ask for an answer. We promise God our obedience, our observance, our careful attention. But it’s easy to play busy, rather than to wait.

    There are times to be busy. We don’t want to miss those. But there are also times to watch and wait, to look to the Lord for the answer. Like Habakkuk (2:1), we need to climb up on the watchtower, stand guard, and wait to see what the Lord says.

    Can you manage to wait for God today?

  • Psalm 119:144 – Testimonies

    Psalm 119:144 – Testimonies

    Your testimonies are righteous forever.
    Give me understanding that I may live.

    This verse illustrates a point I’ve made a few times during this series. The psalmist does not draw clear distinctions between the various terms he uses for God’s law. There’s the overarching “Torah” or “instruction,” but it’s very difficult to differentiate functions for the different aspects of this instruction in the text. This is why I believer the psalmist is using a variety of terms both for literary value (imagine this whole psalm with one word for “law”!) but also to emphasize the broad nature of God’s law.

    This runs from historical narrative, personal experience, and instructions for specific circumstances, all the way to general ethical principles, all wound together. It’s important to understand this. Logically, we distinguish law, as such, from other things in scripture, but this Psalm is not attempting to make careful literary or logical distinctions. He’s praising God for the whole.

    In the law as conceived here we learn that God creates, judges, calls, rescues, guides, blesses, and curses. God interacts with people in many and varied ways. Much of this interaction, in fact, I would argue, the vast majority of the interaction comes in what we would call the natural order of the universe.

    We sometimes look for God in action, and when we fail to find spectacular things happening, we think God is no longer active. I recall in a class I was teaching someone asking me why God is no longer so active as in the Bible. My first reaction is to look around the room and note that we are still here. The laws of nature are still functioning. That’s God in action.

    Someone did something wonderful for me and for my family this week. It was a complete surprise. There was no apparent violation of the laws of nature, but I still believe it was a miracle, and I say this without intending to take anything away from the person who did it.

    So when we get to this verse and we see the prayer, “Give me understanding that I may live,” we see God in action, always and everywhere. “Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” God is, by nature, involved with everything.

    Some people wonder why we should be totally dependent on God’s grace for salvation. Let’s go back further. We’re totally dependent on God’s grace for existence. I like to call this creating grace, the realization that our very existence is a gift. So any other dependence on God is simply derivative of that initial complete dependence. You can’t pay God, because you’d be paying God out of the Divine bank account.

    There’s one other special aspect of this prayer. It’s a prayer that will be fulfilled. For Christians, I would point to James 1:5: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all generously and willingly, and it will be given.” The understanding or the wisdom is a gift that will be given.

    What might change for you today if you relied on God to answer this prayer?