Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Psalm 119

  • Psalm 119:103 – Tasty & Sweet!

    Psalm 119:103 – Tasty & Sweet!

    How tasty are your words to my lips,
    sweet in my mouth.

    This verse calls to mind Psalm 19:11. You might consider reading all of Psalm 19 at this point.

    I don’t know how you respond to reading, hearing, or discussing scripture. I’ve discovered a wide variety of attitudes toward it over the years. For some, it’s largely boring reading. They’re not quite sure why they should bother. For others it’s a source of a few nice verses that are encouraging, sometimes taken out of context. For many, it’s read as a duty. I’ve met quite a number of people who say they read scripture as a duty, and find that they get very little out of it.

    I don’t want to make scripture reading another “work,” something you have to do because God requires it and you might be lost if you don’t read or hear enough. God created a variety of people and knows there are a variety of reactions to reading anything, much less something as varied and complex as the Bible.

    There are those who claim that it’s all very simple. These people usually only read the parts that fit into whatever simple scheme they’ve created in their mind.

    For me, the Bible is a critical part of life. I don’t have a scheduled daily time for reading it. I turn to it frequently. I use it’s words as part of my thinking about other subjects. I can’t stay away from it. Even while I spent 12 years away from church entirely, I still read it from time to time, and when I did so more on my return, I still had the language skills needed to read in the original languages.

    I studied biblical languages because I thought that the Bible was the one place to learn the truth, to come to understand God. I thought that to do that I had to pick my way to an understanding of every detail. Even though I was passionate about the Bible, it also often was tiring, because I found very often that I couldn’t make things are clear as I wanted them to be.

    Still I continued to study. I’m a addict. I need my time with the Bible, which is also, for me, time with God. Jody has told me that she recognizes a particular look I get when reading, and that it indicates to hear that I’m spending time with God and enjoying it.

    For me, God’s Word is alive and active. God’s word extends well beyond the Bible, because it is by the Word that God created everything. But God’s word provides the structure by which I understand that, a structure presented in the form of words. This literary form is the way in which I understand the Word. There are those whose language is math, or music, or even the mysteries of quantum physics, something I don’t comprehend at all.

    My suggestion here is to find the way God can speak to you and spend time in that communication. You may not be a word addict, one who can’t find enough words to satisfy. God will find ways to communicate with you.

    I wrote a poem about this, titled What Was It Like?. I can’t get away from words, but I can celebrate those who do. But the message will be there in one form or another.

    Where will you feel God today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:102 – You Have Taught Me

    Psalm 119:102 – You Have Taught Me

    I do not turn aside from your judgments,
    for you have taught me.

    A couple of days ago, meditating on Psalm 119:99, I discussed teachers. I mentioned the idea briefly of allowing the Holy Spirit to be the teacher.

    I want you to notice the form of this verse. The second half is not an accomplishment that results from his good actions. Rather, the second line explains the first. The psalmist is faithful to God’s decisions, judgments, because it is God who has been doing the teaching.

    There is a line in the prophecy of the new covenant recorded in Jeremiah 31:31-34 that is often ignored. Verse 34 reads “No longer need they teach one another, neighbour or brother, to know the LORD; all of them, high and low alike, will know me, says the LORD….” (REB). We don’t see this now, but I think we need to recognize this as a goal in the church.

    Too much of our teaching energy is spent making sure people understand and accept the things that we, as teachers, believe. I definitely include myself in this. Too little time is spent helping people find their own relationship with God.

    No the word “relationship” has been used in some questionable ways, particularly as a way to avoid actually studying and thinking about God and the world in which we live. But no matter what we may feel or want, there is always a relationship between each of us and God as in created being to creator, and that relationship is important. Relationship doesn’t negate doctrine, understanding things. Rather, relationship is necessary to any learning about God.

    Consider Ephesians 3:18-19: “… may you, in company with all God’s people, be strong to grasp what is the breadth and length and height and depth (19) of Christ’s love, and to know it, though it is beyond knowledge.” Technical knowledge isn’t sufficient. Personal knowledge is required. But personal knowledge is not exclusively individual knowledge. We know “with all God’s people.”

    As teachers in the church, we should be constantly working ourselves out of a job, constantly relying on the Holy Spirit, and constantly expecting that the Holy Spirit will guide others. We live in a new creation. We are a new creation. So is everyone we teach.

    This means that while we still have a teaching and discipling role, that role is one that is mutual, that is, we learn along with all God’s people. We make it easier for everyone to learn from God. That means there is a difference in teaching and mentoring in the Christian community. We do not build a dependence on what we think or have to say. We look to join together and grow in our dependence on God.

    How can you encourage someone to grow in their knowledge of what is beyond knowledge today?

  • Psalm 119:101 – Evil Paths

    Psalm 119:101 – Evil Paths

    I have kept my feet away from every evil path
    so that I might keep your word.

    Too often we think of keeping from doing things that are wrong as a point-by-point effort. Make a list of things we shouldn’t do, and avoid those things.

    This can be a dangerous trap if undertaken independently of other reforms. It leads to an a sort of “goodness accounting” in which we count deeds done correctly, and use this a sign posts on our road to being better people. One of the more humorous, and yet destructive things this can lead to is keeping count of sins not committed, and considering these great accomplishments.

    This happens in dieting, a process with which I’m somewhat acquainting. It’s easy to tell yourself that you didn’t eat that dessert after lunch, and thus you can be excused for having an extra slice of cake at dinner. This kind of accounting results in forgetting the totals, and providing oneself an excuse for whatever one wishes to eat. Trust me, you’re not going to keep an accurate account. You don’t really want to.

    If you want to get to a destination, you need to get on a path that goes there. About three years ago various lab tests informed me that I needed to make a serious change in lifestyle, eat less, eat better, and get more exercise. One possibility is to try to count the things I was doing better, and do those until better numbers resulted in my lab test. The alternative was to change paths, to choose a new lifestyle that involved healthier eating and more activity. Once you get on that path, details become easier, because you realize that everything has to be different and it needs to stay that way. There is no day coming when cakes, pies, and ice cream from a substantial part of the diet, and there is no time coming when you can afford to go back to couch potato ways.

    Turning back to myself, I had to decide to change paths. I knew that, because I know myself well enough to know that any haphazard approach involving singular acts of self-sacrifice would end up with as many acts of self indulgence and no actual gain in health.

    (Please here this in the context of God’s sanctifying grace and reliance on divine power. I’ve discussed that before while meditating on this psalm and that hasn’t changed.)

    To look at another issue, and one on which I have had much less success, consider a balance in work and rest. Again, picking out this or that to change, drop,, or add to the schedule is likely to drive one crazy and increase tension. What is needed (I tell myself) is a change of approach overall. You see, I can’t say with the psalmist that I have kept away from every evil path.

    And here we need to consider “evil.” Some may be thinking, “A little bit of overworking, or even lots of overworking isn’t evil.” You see, we want to think of overwork as diligence. Then we try to keep things manageable by dropping this or that task, or taking a moment here or there instead of looking for a balanced way to approach life and work.

    Killing yourself by overeating or overworking is not really morally better than killing yourself more intentionally. It just looks better, feels better, and comes with a false sense of pride and self-justification.

    But in the end that balance, and simply following the ideal path that God lays out is the one path that leads anywhere helpful.

    What path are you on?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:100 – More Understanding than the Elders

    Psalm 119:100 – More Understanding than the Elders

    I have more understanding than the elders,
    for I have kept your precepts.

    One of the difficult things to keep in balance is respect for one’s elders and at the same time the realization that those elders are not always right. In fact, those elders can be corrupt.

    Rather than my own discussion of this, I’m going to take a different approach. There are some Greek additions to the book of Daniel which are part of the Old Testament Apocrypha, accepted as scripture by Roman Catholics, Orthodox and some others. One of these additions is the story of Susanna.

    Susanna is a godly and beautiful women. Two elders develop lust for Susanna and contrive to catch her alone in her garden, as she has sent her maidens away. They tell her they will testify that they saw her with a young man if she does not yield to them. She stands firm.

    They take her before the other elders and testify that she is an adulteress and she is sentenced to death. A young man, Daniel by name (surprise!) is disturbed by the verdict and through his wisdom catches the men in a lie, finding that they contradict themselves about the type of tree under which they had encountered her with her supposed lover.

    As a result, Susanna is set free and Daniel becomes famous.

    The English Revised Version of this story is available online. The NRSV Catholic Edition is available on BibleGateway.com.

    Some time ago I created a retelling of the story on my Jevlir Caravansary blog.

    (Featured image credit: ID 193588715 © Nicoleta Raluca Tudor | Dreamstime.com)

  • Psalm 119:99 – Teachers

    Psalm 119:99 – Teachers

    I have more understanding than all my teachers,
    for your testimonies are my meditation.

    It’s nice to do a meditation based on a text about meditation!

    The advantage and disadvantage of a meditation, as opposed to exegesis of a passage is that your meditation can lead you in a direction other than what the writer was intending. I did that today. I meditated about teaching.

    The first question that crossed my mind was how could I, as a teacher, keep my students from deciding they are wiser than I am since they meditate on God’s testimonies. An immediate answer came to mind. If I, as a teacher, am meditating on God’s testimonies, doesn’t that keep me ahead?

    It wasn’t long, however, before I was asking myself whether I should be concerned if my students were, or become, wiser than I am. And there’s an immediate answer to that. If I’m worried about my students getting ahead of me in any way, I have the wrong attitude. I should be delighted if any student of mine is wiser than I am or learns more about the subjects I teach than I know.

    Some years ago my nephew introduced me to someone as “the person who taught him how to program.” That’s true in only a most minor sense. I helped him with a few things when he was just starting out. He’s now a senior software engineer at Google and knows things in depth that I have no understanding of at all. And I’m very, very proud of him.

    The possibility of seeding some small thing into the life of a student and then seeing that student reach heights the teacher has not imagined is, I believe, as great a joy as any teacher can have.

    Now there are those, especially in religion and theology, who think the task of a teacher is to make sure the student stays on the straight and narrow way. The student must learn to believe the same things and teach the same things as the teacher, or the teacher has failed. If that is the goal, then the Psalm 119:99 student would mark failure, and the teacher would forever have to deny the insights of the student.

    I was to teach at a conference on prayer many years ago. I expected to have an hour, and I had a good hour’s worth of notes. Those who know me will realize that I only use notes to keep myself on the program. If I don’t use notes, I can easily fill an hour, and then the next, and so forth. Notes are, for me, a necessary discipline, telling me when to shut up!

    In this case, previous speakers kept pushing things later and later, and I realized that unless I wanted to keep people from their lunch, which the conference leader would doubtless not allow, I’d have less time. I kept hearing the nudge of the Holy Spirit: “Let me do the teaching.” So I chopped my notes down to size, and given a half hour, I took 20 minutes. Again, those who know me, will realize the miraculous nature of this self-restraint!

    Following that session I was approached by one pastor. I won’t go into the details, but that contact became one of the most encouraging and helpful contacts of my life. I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t have happened if I had been my normal wordy self. And I would definitely say that pastor, my student for 20 minutes, has more understanding than at least this teacher.

    Who can you encourage today to go beyond your example, your teaching, or even your imagination?

    (Featured image credit: Jovanmandic, licensed via iStockPhoto.com)

  • Psalm 119:98 – Wiser

    Psalm 119:98 – Wiser

    Your commands have made me wiser than my enemies,
    for they are mine forever.

    There’s an interesting translation issue here as well, as there often is with poetry. The first part of the verse uses a plural “commands,” but the second half uses a singular. Most translations, starting way back with the Septuagint accommodate the first to the second, using a singular. I think it is more likely that the singular in the second half is intended as collective.

    One of the great values of God’s revelation to us is good ideas. This may sound weak. We want to make lots of pious statements about scripture and God’s law(s), such as that they are eternal, authoritative, beyond human capacity. All these things may be true, but in elevating the law we can also miss its simple value.

    I’m reminded of how I sometimes answer the question “How are you?” with “Functional.” Frequently I’m then asked, “Oh! What’s wrong?” Well, I thought “functional” was pretty good! It’s much better than not functional.

    Thus with God’s law. There are some great theological points to be made, but in some cases we need to just look at the value of law in general and of the order that allows us to function. I’ve been emphasizing the more general idea of revelation, beyond rules. But we should stop and consider the value of rules.

    Again I’m reminded of the humorous statement; 186,000 miles per second: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law! The fact that there are constants like this in the universe is, to put it very mildly, critical! There are also things that are critical to living well and constructively as humans.

    Laws are wise when they prevent things from going wrong. Good traffic laws, for example, save lives, and facilitate people getting where they need to go in predictable lengths of time. When these things don’t happen, we’ll talk about bad laws or ineffective enforcement.

    It’s quite possible to have bad laws. Bad laws make things function less effectively. (Amazing, I know!)

    I’d suggest that when we properly understand God’s laws, we’ll find the laws that function best in the universe God created. This is the simple message of our verse. God’s laws are wise laws, and by making them ours we gain wisdom. It’s an eternal gift from God.

    Look today for ways to handle your life that reflect God’s law. You won’t attain this perfectly, but you’ll be blessed by looking in that direction.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:97 – Loving the Law

    Psalm 119:97 – Loving the Law

    How I love your instruction!
    All day long I meditate on it.

    Most translations will use the word “law” where I’m translating “instruction.” That is a traditional translation that goes back to the Septuagint (LXX), which uses the Greek word nomos. This focus on the “law” aspect, rather than the broader aspect of “instruction” can give us a skewed idea of what the Psalmist and other readers and writers of Hebrew scripture are discussing.

    But, as Christians, we also have a tendency to strip out and ignore the actual rules that are contained in Torah, which would more traditionally be regarded as law. You will miss something if you read Hebrew scripture, especially the first five books known as Torah or the Pentateuch, while ignoring any of these aspects. When the Psalmist celebrates, he is celebrating the whole, not some subset.

    So what do we have to celebrate in the law?

    Let’s start with something we may not enjoy, but which is very important. Law tells us where we are wrong. This may not be fun, and we may rebel or be angry, but it can be important. Let me give an example.

    In my mind I picture driving out of Monteagle, Tennessee, along I-24, out of Monteagle pass headed east toward Chattanooga. It was worse before the interstate went through there, but even now the road can be deceptively difficult. When you see a warning sign giving the speed limit, it’s good to pay attention. When another sign gives a safe speed for a corner ahead, it’s a good idea to heed it. I have failed to do so in the past, and had a few frightening moments.

    As I come upon one of those signs, if I want to keep moving and get to my destination quickly, I’m not inclined to be happy with the law. It’s easy to say the highway engineers have been over cautious. I can go a lot faster than that and still be safe. I really don’t like that law. It’s making me slow down when I want to go fast.

    But a significant number of motorists have discovered that “there is a [speed] that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (paraphrased from Proverbs 14:12). I may grate under the limitations of law, but the law is good in the warning.

    You can have the vehicle and the road but lack at least part of the law. I discovered this in Budapest, Hungary. I was leading a mission team headed out to provide a children’s camp in eastern Hungary, and due to a poorly scheduled connection, I was stranded for several hours in Atlanta waiting for another flight. I was expecting to pick up a rental car in Debrecen, close to where we would work, but since this delay meant I would miss our welcoming committee and the ride from Budapest to Debrecen, I had to reschedule a planned rental car for pickup in Budapest, then spend the night at a hotel there, and proceed to catch up with the team I was “leading” the next day.

    I asked the travel agent to get me a hotel near the airport and to the east of the city. That’s because that was the direction I was going to go. I didn’t want to find my way through Budapest at night. That was not what happened. The travel agent got me a hotel that was north and a bit west, though still on the eastern side of the Danube.

    Now I know at least some of a number of languages, but Hungarian is not one of those languages. I had looked at a word book, and figured out perhaps a dozen words, though the pronunciation of Hungarian is difficult enough for a native speaker of English that it’s hard to be sure you’re getting it close enough to be understood.

    What was worse is that road signs were unfamiliar and some traffic patterns were different than what I was used to. The agent at the rental counter was enthusiastic and explained to me that the route to my hotel was very easy, that I couldn’t miss it and would have not trouble. Welcome to Hungary!

    “You can’t miss it” is a very fateful statement. Never, ever believe it.

    Twenty minutes later, about the time I should have been at the hotel according to my directions, I was looking out the window from a bridge at the waters of the Danube. Now if you’re a tourist in Budapest, this is something you want to do, but if you are 36 hours into a 12 hour journey, it looks less friendly. Especially if you’re aware that your destination is on the side of the river you are leaving.

    Well, I can’t make the story short at this point, but I’ll shorten it some. Two hours and several conversations with helpful Hungarians I could not understand later, I actually found my hotel. The problem here is that there were rules of the road, directions, traffic flow patterns, and signs, all of which could have helped, but I couldn’t comprehend them. I might have found signs annoying when they said I needed to be in a certain lane, or go a particular speed or a particular direction, but it was much more annoying not to know.

    Proverbs 14:12 rattled around in my mind that night, and I preached on it a couple of times, to a great deal of laughter from my Hungarian friends. And I must note that even complete strangers during that two and a half hour experience were extremely friendly. We just couldn’t communicate because I didn’t know the language.

    As annoying as it can be, law is a value.

    As you go through your day today, ask yourself what rules are helping you get done what you need to do.

    (The featured image is a map of Budapest, Hungary, credit max_776, licensed via Adobe Stock. If I recall correctly, I was crossing the bridge across the Danube that you see at the bottom of the map (south), headed west when I realized I had lost my way!)

  • Psalm 119:96 – Ends

    Psalm 119:96 – Ends

    I have send the limits of all perfection,
    but your command is very broad.

    I have rarely seen as many different possible translations for a verse. Dahood (Anchor Bible Psalms) turns the words for “end” and “broad” into epithets for God. If I were to translate more loosely, I might, at this point suggest something like, “I have seen that everything in our world has a limit, but your commandment exceeds all of those.”

    But my project has been to meditate on the verse, not resolve all language and translation issues. Of course, getting a sense of what the verse means is important to that. Who knew?

    In fact, the verse may give a good example of the meaning I’m seeing in it. There’s an end to my ability to come up with a translation of which I can be certain!

    I recall just after I had received my BA, with a major in biblical languages, I was traveling with my brother to where I would attend graduate school. I stopped for a church service in Yellowstone park near the visitor center at Old Faithful. Inevitably, as a bunch of travelers gather for church we exchanged information on why we were there and where we were going.

    I told them what I had been studying and that I was traveling across country to go to graduate school in the same subject. Following the service a gentleman approached me to ask a question about the translation of a verse that had been bothering him. I talked to him for a bit and then my brother and I headed out walking around the geyser.

    It suddenly hit me and I started laughing. “What?” my brother asked. “Do you realize I just talked to that guy for 10 minutes and I never gave him an answer to his question?” “Well, what was the answer?” “I actually have no idea!”

    One of the problems of studying and learning is that you can forget along the way that there is an end to your knowledge. You can lose the ability to say, “I don’t know.” The best scholars I have known, and the best experts in any topic, are the ones who know their limits and can admit those limits.

    This is true whether you’re a biblical scholar, an auto mechanic, a farmer, or anything else. It’s a wise person who knows what he or she has and has not mastered.

    I think theology is one of the most tempting fields, because we want to be certain. We don’t want to be limited, and because there are so many things in theology that you can’t pin down like a lab result, we are often vastly more certain than our actual knowledge can justify.

    Did this meditation really come from the verse I quoted and (mis?)translated? To the best of my knowledge, yes. But I have seen the end of the best of my knowledge. Or at least I hope I have!

    Can you recognize your limitations? Can you still be joyful and fulfilled?

    (Featured image credit:Orla. LIcensed from iStockPhoto.com)

  • Psalm 119:95 – Consider

    Psalm 119:95 – Consider

    The wicked wait for me to destroy me,
    but I consider your testimonies.

    What do I think about when you realize that wicked people are after me?

    It’s an interesting question. Recently, we had some temporary residents move onto a property near us. I know the owner, who was doing what he regarded as the right thing: helping people in need find a temporary place to live. Though there were complaints around the neighborhood, I agreed with him about Christian duty.

    Then a few items normally left outside disappeared. Nothing expensive, but we live in an area where you can normally leave things out and expect them to still be there the next day. I started leaving outside lights on at my office (a separate small building) and on both porches. We didn’t have further trouble.

    My friend who owned the neighboring property did have more trouble, and eventually some people had to be removed from the property. Through all of this, that property owner remained a positive. His concern? Some people who behaved badly had made it impossible for him to help others.

    I like his example. Often we allow the way others behave to change who we are. We become bitter. We can even become angry and ruin our own lives because of what other people have done.

    This verse points to another approach. Even when others are treating you badly, keep your eye on God and on something better.

    I see this sometimes among Christians who feel that their faith has been disrespected by others. They become afraid to speak publicly or admit who they are. I always have to confess when I talk about this that I’m saved from this issue by an occupational hazard. As a publisher of Christian books, it’s hard for me to hide even if I wanted to. But it’s easy to isolate ourselves or perceive ourselves as outcasts when that’s not what people are thinking at all. We’ve just worked our way into a prison of our own thinking.

    In various television shows or movies and even in the news, I see stories of people who imagine a complete relationship with someone that doesn’t exist. Someone may do this with a celebrity, for example.

    Ray Stevens has a humorous song about this phenomenon.

    We laugh, but people get messed up by imagined situations. Then, of course, there is the reality of real danger, real hostility.

    What to do?

    I think this verse provides a most excellent antidote. Meditate on the good stuff. Meditate on what God has done. Meditate on what’s right. That will help you recognize the real danger and understand how to respond to various threats. Don’t spend your time in the first half of the verse.

    Let God’s word be your anchor in a potentially dangerous world.

  • Psalm 119:94 – I’m Yours

    Psalm 119:94 – I’m Yours

    I’m yours! Save me!
    For I have searched out your precepts.

    It’s good to remember that “save” has quite a number of meanings other than the common Christian understanding of salvation from sin and for eternity. Salvation could be from whatever threat the one offering the prayer might experience.

    But I think the greatest impact of this verse is in the first two words, either in Hebrew or as I’ve translated them. “I’m yours.” Everything follows from that initial claim, the claim made by God, that the human person is a child of God.

    It may be tempting to regard this as applying only to Israel. It does, in fact, apply to Israel in a special way. Similarly, Christians might view this as applying especially only to Christians. Again, there is a sense in which we, as the body of Christ, can say we belong to God.

    But one of the messages that comes through clearly in the Old Testament is that God is sovereign over and cares for all the nations. Thus one could truly say that all the nations are God’s, but Israel is God’s in a particular way.

    The Psalmist has searched out God’s precepts, and among those precepts are commands to care for the stranger, the foreigner, and those less fortunate. Right from the beginning, when God calls Abram, he blesses him and tells him he is to be a blessing.

    There are exclusive groups and inclusive groups. In an exclusive group, you are designated as someone special, someone who can be a member of a select group, because of your birth, your attainments, or even because of random selection. People in an exclusive group are supposed to help keep the walls secure and the doors shut.

    In an inclusive group, anyone is invited. The only thing special about the people on the inside is the fact that they’ve heard the invitation and accepted it. This is Christianity, or should be. The mission is to invite others into the grace which we have received.

    Some wonder if the Jews can still be the chosen people from a Christian perspective. Of course they can. They have been chosen by God and given a mission. It was never an exclusive club in the sense of being the only people God cared. for. It was exclusive in terms of the call to mission, a call going back to Abraham.

    I can say to God, “I’m yours.” I always have that privilege. I do not have the privilege of saying, “I belong to God and that other guy doesn’t.”

    Who can you treat as a child of God today?

    (Featured image yy ana. Licensed from Adobe Stock.)