Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Psalms

  • Psalm 119:35 – Make Me Do What I Want To

    Psalm 119:35 – Make Me Do What I Want To

    Make me walk in the path of your commands,
    For in it I take delight.

    On first read, this verse can sound very strange. Some translations and some interpreters tend to take a less forceful reading of the first verb, the one I translate “make me walk.” We sometimes think that we do what we want to do when we turn of our good judgment and our will and just go with the flow. But often following the path of least resistance leads to regret and to doing things we very much do not want to do.

    That sounds a bit complicated. Let me illustrate.

    When I was in college and yes, even in graduate school I was a good student getting good grades. The records bear this out. But I had some less than excellent study habits. So I’d end up the night before some assignment was due with nothing in hand and I’d have to work all night. I wanted to have the assignment done earlier. I wanted to work with less tension. I wanted to do a better job.

    But I didn’t.

    I remember the Monday morning when I had a five page discussion of the literary form of French “fabliaux,” a particular form of poetic short story. I would likely not remember the name except for the way I did this. I woke up, realized I have about an hour to produce five pages, get to class and present it to the class–in French, no less. I read one story, wrote five pages, arrived at class out of breath, and presented the paper. I did OK, but I wonder what I might have discovered had I done more study.

    This verse speaks to me in that sort of situation. Following the best path makes everything better, even though I may have to force myself to do it. The path of least resistance may feel good, but it’s not the delight. I join in the Psalmist’s prayer to ask God to put him on that delightful path, the one that comes out with the satisfying result. That call to the best path falls under what we Wesleyans call prevenient grace.

    While we may wish for the good result without following the good path, we generally realize that doesn’t work, and we live with the occasions on which we have followed the easy path instead of the best one.

    Let this verse be a prayer. Lord help me to get where I really, under the guidance and prompting of Your Spirit, want to go.

  • Psalm 119:34 – I Will Guard It with My Whole Mind

    Psalm 119:34 – I Will Guard It with My Whole Mind

    Give me understanding, and I will keep your Instruction (Torah).
    I will guard it with my entire mind.

    The heart, in ancient Israel, represented the mind or intellect. I have translated this as “mind.” This goes with the beginning of the verse, “Give me understanding.”

    There’s a basic principle here that I find repeatedly in scripture: God gives the power for all we do. God grants the intellectual ability, and with that understanding, the Psalmist promises to keep the entire law.

    But I allowed my own mind to wander again through scripture. The time I just spend on my treadmill, listening to Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, led me through the introduction to 1 Kings and then to the first couple of chapters. There are some interesting things that stand out from the story.

    Solomon was a wise man. Until he wasn’t.

    Solomon was a great king. Until he wasn’t.

    He was king of a united Israel, until he wasn’t and it wasn’t.

    There’s a lesson here. Intellectual ability is a useful thing. Until it isn’t.

    I can’t count the number of times I have figured out that something was utterly impossible, only the find the possibility opening up. More than 10 years ago I returned from a mission trip which had eaten up my resources. I knew I had to stick with my work and guard such money as was coming in to make it through the next few weeks.

    While I was thinking these thoughts, I was approached to join another mission trip. I didn’t want to go. I wearily explained that I had just returned from a month overseas and had used up my energy and my resources. But then I continued with the fateful words. “If the resources will be provided somehow, I’ll go. But I don’t expect it.”

    It was less than a week before someone had provided the entire cost of the mission trip. I had expected this not to happen, as the group going had a policy of not allowing full scholarships. They believed each person going on the mission should support themselves with at least half of the resources needed. Yet somehow nobody had the slightest objection.

    But God wasn’t yet done with me. After setting aside money for my family while I was gone, my pocket was literally empty. I knew food was covered, and I’d be OK, but it wasn’t the best feeling ever. The day before I left, a friend of mine who knew i was going asked me if I had anything for myself for the trip. I said I was tapped out with covering expenses at home. He took out his wallet and handed me $200.

    I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t even prayed for it. I had been convinced in my mind that it was impossible.

    Let me go back in history a bit to my parents. (I like the four generations idea expressed in the opening verses of Psalm 78. If you aren’t acquainted with that chapter, you could do worse than to stop right now and read it.)

    Back in 1971 my parents and I headed to Guyana, South America, not to be confused with Ghana, which is in west Africa, and regularly received our mail! Since I really love that little country, and many people don’t know where it is, here is a map and some information for you!

    Guyana world map polygon with a diamond pattern.
    By kameonline

    Within a couple of days of our arrival, my father, a physician, required major emergency surgery. The surgeon who performed this surgery stated that my father would never work again, and wouldn’t live more than 10 years.

    For two weeks this seemed to be the verdict. He was just not getting better. The mission board wanted to bring him home. In fact, they were starting to make the arrangements. My parents said that they had gone to Guyana to do a mission and they hadn’t done it yet. I was 14 years old at the time and was dismayed by the lack of progress.

    My parents chose to call for the elders of the church and have my father anointed with oil as they prayed for his healing. I was seriously disappointed with the results. There was no miraculous activity, such as him getting up off the bed and heading out to work.

    But that was the limits of human understanding again. Two weeks later my dad took over as the medical director of a 54 bed hospital and was on call 24/7 for the next year. He lived another 37 years. Later in his life, he and I had a little joke when I’d call and ask him how he was, and he’d say, “I think I’m xx years overdue to be dead!”

    Solomon exemplified this limitation. With many wonderful things taking place and with many demonstrations of wisdom, he still failed as a leader in the end, with the kingdom divided. Perhaps this line from Proverbs gives the right feeling: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (3:6, KJV). In fact, my mother wrote a book about her life experiences with the title Directed Paths.

    Where do you need God to give you understanding?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:32 – Enlargement

    Psalm 119:32 – Enlargement

    The way of your commands I will run,
    As you broaden my understanding.

    A young man once commented to me that he thought that perhaps we were trespassing on God’s sphere with scientific discoveries, that we were approaching knowledge that God had kept to himself alone. I asked him this: Do you believe that God is so fragile that he can be threatened by what little we can learn of the incredible amount there is to learn about this amazing universe. And what we know as the universe may not truly be the universe, or all that there is.

    There’s a much more likely reaction. There’s an episode in Life, the Universe, and Everything, the third book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series. The Krikkiters have lived for ages on a planet enclosed in a dust cloud and thus have not known that there were any other stars or galaxies. For reasons explained in the book, they build a spaceship and travel past the edge of the dust cloud that encases their galaxy, and come upon the incredible site of the galaxies and starts that surround them. Seeing this, they immediately determine two things. First, it’s very beautiful. Second, it’s got to go!

    We often act very much like that. Push our horizon a bit too far out and we want to settle back into things that are already well known. “We ain’t never done it that way before” becomes “we ain’t never thought of anything like that before.”

    We like a small and easily imagined universe, and with that we want a carefully delimited god suitable to our imagined universe. When we see something bigger, we may think it’s beautiful, but it’s got to go.

    In turn, we read scripture in such a way as to fit it into our limited universe, and so as to imagine it produced by a similarly limited god. If someone goes beyond those boundaries we are quick to yell “heretic” and “corrupter.”

    And we read the Psalms in this way. I have heard material from Psalm 119 and other Psalms used simply to explain why we ought to be so thankful to God for making up some very good rules. Many of these rules could be deduced from just looking around our little corner of the universe.

    The keepers of the acceptable often complain that those who speak of the power of God’s grace, and do not see the value of a path of holiness that is just about doing certain stuff and not doing certain other stuff as being against God’s law. Antinomian is the word.

    I teach a principle in Bible study that I call the hammer and saw principle. “Don’t criticize your hammer because it won’t saw boards.” Don’t criticize the law, conceived as a set of rules, because it won’t make people holy or even good. That’s not what it’s there for.

    Psalm 119 turns into a boring and trite piece of propaganda when read as high praise of a list of rules. But when read as the high praise of the God who stands behind those rules and invites people to ever greater things, it sounds very different.

    I used “broaden” in our verse today as a translation. In other translations you’ll find many ways of translating this Hebrew word. But it comes to the word party with a sense of widening and making something bigger. Combining various senses of a word can be dangerous, but I think it’s also dangerous to ignore where a word came from. We can lose the broader sense that the word brings to us when we totally ignore its origins.

    “Make my mind bigger.” This is what will bring on running in the way depicted by God’s commands. It doesn’t bring on checklist managing. It doesn’t bring on a life restricted from greatness by a list of petty limitations. It’s a life made possible by the broadening power of the God of the commandments.

    The law can be a most horrifying and destructive force when it is allowed to replace the Lawgiver. It is God who broadens. It is God who acts first. And it is a God of enlargement that is involved in it all. A giving God, a gracious God, is One who opens doors onto broad vistas of life now and in the future.

    I believe the Psalmist sees this as he praises God as revealed in the instructions, the Word that God has given.

    As a Christian reader of the Psalms, I have come to this particular verse on Christmas Eve, writing something that will be published Christmas morning. For me, the incarnation is the central doctrine of my faith. It’s one I won’t let go of. But more importantly it’s one I want to understand more and more.

    The incarnation is not just an historical event. Yes, I see it as something that happened in history. There was a time and place at which God became present (was revealed) in a human infant. But that moment also represents the timeless fact that God has always been and will always be with us.

    Glory came into a stable. Something that could not be contained was represented in the small, the ordinary, the limited. We try to make this seem better in so many ways. We want it to seem more dignified. But there is nothing more undignified that pure Glory contained in a human body. Philippians 2:5-11 gives a bit of the sense of that.

    But in the same mode, what is human, what is small, what is limited, was called to something greater by the touch of infinity. The incarnation in that place had/has/will have impact and meaning at all times and in all places. It says fundamentally who God is. It says that Infinity chooses to connect with the finite, indeed that Infinity created the finite and calls it to greatness.

    When we note that we cannot keep the law, or be worthy of God’s glory as noted in scripture, it’s not merely that we’re going to screw up and do stupid and destructive things, though we will. It is that we can’t even conceive of the glory to which we are constantly called by the same Infinity that showed up in a manger and showed us that yes, it could happen.

    Creation, redemption, first and second coming all combine into the ultimate reality of the God whose nature is such that God appears in a stable.

    To what glory is God calling you from your stable?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:31 – Holding God’s Testimonies

    Psalm 119:31 – Holding God’s Testimonies

    I have held tightly to your testimonies;
    Don’t let me be put to shame.

    It’s quite possible to translate the second half of this verse as “don’t put me to shame.”

    Have you ever felt that God was calling on you to take a certain stand, or act in a certain way, and you hope you’re right? Have you considered the prayer offered here? “Don’t leaving me hanging, Lord! I’m doing your work. I need you to make things work out here.”

    It’s easy to cover up my own concerns with concerns for God’s reputation. “Lord, if I do this and you don’t back me up, people will think You are not faithful!” But behind that are the more human thoughts. “If I step out in faith and God doesn’t perform a miracle, I’m going to look like at idiot.” Or simply, “If I take that particular moral stand, people are going to despise me.”

    Sticking with God’s plan can be unpleasant. Just look at the apostles. Being an apostle was not a life-choice conducive to longevity. The path of God’s instructions may not be easy. You don’t need to go that far back. Today, as I write, I know people who face persecution for the stand they take for their faith.

    And don’t imagine that all these problems come from non-Christians. You may be asked to take a stand in your own church, against those who should be your friends, supporters, and prayer partners. “Don’t let me be put to shame, Lord!”

    You’ll also find those whose claim to cling to God’s testimonies is just a pretense. Very likely you’ll be tempted along the same lines. There’s always a good cause, or a cause that appears to be good, and the temptation will be to jump on the bandwagon while claiming that you’re clinging to God’s testimonies. Don’t tell me that you don’t care about the opinion of other people in your church, or those from that “more successful” church down the road with more members.

    And then there’s the simple fact that no matter how hard you cling, sometimes you’re going to be wrong. Sometimes you’re going to be quite when you should speak, or you’re going to speak when you should be quiet. Probably lots of times, if you’re honest.

    It’s a very human prayer: “Lord I’m doing all I can, help me out. Don’t let me look like a fool. Don’t let me look like a hypocrite.”

    Then it’s time to remember that as God’s child, it all belongs to God. Your successes and failures both! The next breath, the next step, is in God’s hands.

    (Featured image from Adobe Stock. Not public domain.)

  • Psalm 119:30 – I Have Chosen

    Psalm 119:30 – I Have Chosen

    I have chosen faithfulness as my path.
    I’m in place1 with your judgments.

    1 There is considerable controversy about how this verb should be translated.

    A literal translation may make this clearer:

    Decided have I a way of faith
    with your judgments I have agreed

    D. Robert MacDonald, Seeing the Psalter, p. 382

    Let me commend again, Bob MacDonald’s treatment of the Psalms, and indeed is work with music of Hebrew scripture.

    As I meditated on this verse, I kept coming back to New Year’s resolutions and the fact that I don’t make them. I have done so in the past, but I haven’t for years. New Year’s resolutions are famous for their short duration. We determine to do things, but then we really don’t. Thus the broken New Year’s resolution has become a cliche. I heard this question recently on a Family Feud episode, and if I recall correctly, the #1 answer was two weeks. And that might have been optimistic.

    We joke about it, but then we tend to live our lives that way. So should we give up on making decisions? Should we cease to try to do right because we so often fail?

    About two years ago, I got the results of some blood tests that showed my glucose was way too high. The doctor already had a list of prescription medications he wanted me to take. I said, “I don’t think so. I’m going to do some lifestyle changes and see how that goes.” The look of skepticism he gave me was memorable. But he agreed with my process, and I graciously (!) didn’t tell him it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t.

    Three months later the relevant numbers, including now A1C and blood glucose had dropped below levels of concern. They weren’t down to where one would like them, but he confessed that most of his patients who were on medications had trouble maintaining that good of numbers.

    I made a decision, and for the most part, I carried it out. Not nearly to perfection, but to my own benefit. My sleep is better, my productivity is better, I have more energy. The result is great!

    So what if I said, “Most people fail at these things. In fact, I usually fail at these things. There’s no point in making an effort”? I’d be taking more medications, and while my glucose level would likely be lower due to medication, the other benefits would not have occurred.

    Or, on the other hand, I could observe difficult moments, days on which I didn’t complete my exercise goals, or the time back in September when I was sick for a week, and then practically had to start over building up my activity levels.

    I don’t know if Psalm 119 is a Psalm of David, but David was “a man after God’s own heart,” (1 Samuel 13:14), and wrote some of the Psalms. I’ve just been listening to the stories of David including his behavior with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. We also have Psalm 51, which the superscription presents as David’s confession and determination to follow God’s way after God has forgiven and restored him.

    I think it’s important to recognize when decisions and resolutions are valuable and when they are not. Writing these meditations was a decision. I plan to write 176 of them. I may skip Christmas and New Year’s Day, but then again, I might not. I can tell you that while my statistics indicate readership is dismally low, simply taking the time to mediate on these verses as been a worthwhile resolution.

    Might I suggest that Hebrews 6:1 “be carried on to perfection” provides a similar resolution. I’ve summarized the message of Hebrews as this: “Get on the right train and stay on it till it reaches the destination.” With the author of Hebrews, I’m determined to stay on the train.

    But don’t let your value be determined by your resolutions or your success at carrying them out. You are “a little lower than God” (Psalm 8:5), you are a child of God, a brother of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:11). You are all that already.

    Make good decisions; rest in God’s goodness.

  • Psalm 119:29 – Grace Me with Your Instruction

    Psalm 119:29 – Grace Me with Your Instruction

    Deceitful ways turn aside from me
    and graciously give me your instruction [Torah].

    It’s hard to read this verse when we use “law” as the English gloss for Torah. Graciously give me your rules? Graciously let me live in your rules?

    But that none of those are actually bad translations. Law or instruction, and the Torah as instruction includes lots of rules, is a gracious gift of a gracious God. Further, any ability to walk in those laws is also a gracious gift of a gracious God.

    There is no plan for people, Jews or gentiles, in scripture that does not include the creation at some point of a holy people. Our problem is in trying to approach law without grace. Law seen as a hurdle, as the means by which we somehow work our way into God’s favor, is always negative. It shows us up, makes us feel bad, discourages us, and eventually destroys us.

    But God offers another way, which is simply to allow the operation of God’s grace in our lives.

    The Psalmist recognizes this. Repeatedly he talks about what he is trying to do. But also repeatedly he asks God to help him, or even to make him do it right. He has joy in the law only because he also has joy in the God of Israel.

    In New Testament terms, I could quote Philippians 2:12-13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do his good pleasure.” I think the spirit there is much like the spirit of the psalmist.

    Another New Testament passage is also important. It’s quoted frequently by Wesleyans, but I translate it differently. “[L]et us go on unto perfection …” (Hebrews 6:1) is the KJV reading. But the verb is passive (or might be regarded as middle in meaning, which the KJV and many other versions do. I take it as passive: “Let us be carried on to perfection.” Perfection is the goal, but the route is different. The law is still the standard and still challenging, but instead of a hurdle to jump in one’s approach to God, it’s a glorious goal toward which God, in power and grace, is carrying us.

    I challenge you (and myself) to rest in God’s grace. It’s not that it’s the easiest or the fastest way. It’s the only way.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:28 – Raise Me Up

    Psalm 119:28 – Raise Me Up

    My soul weeps from grief,
    Strengthen me according to your word.

    There are, as always, a number of directions I could go, and that I’d like to go, starting from this verse. I just want to mention one I’m not going to pursue. Recently I had occasion to discuss grief and suffering as discussed in the book of Job. This verse sums up what I see there. It’s not about finding the best way to handle the situation, or even having the situation explained, but about God noticing and responding, and the sufferer being able to realize that. I thought about translating thus: “I’m crying deep inside / restore me with your creative power.” That’s a bit paraphrased, but it’s more what I heard as I read.

    But I want to take a bit of a tour of what I look at and think about during the day regarding each verse. Meditating on a verse is very different from performing exegesis, or trying to prepare an exposition. I’m not trying to prove points of theology with couplets from this Psalm as prooftexts. It’s a spiritual activity where I intend to let the Spirit lead me through the day. That mental walk can take me very different places. In the end, I like to tie things to exegesis of some text(s), but the process is not formal.

    So let me start by looking at a couple of translations and some notes they provide.

    First, the well-known NIV, reading (and finding notes) from the NIV Study Bible. Here’s the translation:

    My soul is weary with sorrow;h
    Strengthen mei according to your word.j

    Psalm 119:28 (NIV)
    Image of the cross-reference notes on Psalm 119:28 in the NIV Study Bible.

    I’m providing a picture of the cross-reference notes, which are part of the edition, not the translation itself, and will leave you to follow those trails if you wish. But could I strongly comment Isaiah 51:11 as a path to follow? Click on the image to enlarge it for reading.

    The translation itself is not that different, though it’s taking a different. In fact, my own translation, done before I checked the NIV, uses the same translation for the second line of the couplet. A more usual gloss for the Hebrew word used here is “raise me up,” but “raising” can mean different things depending on context.

    The CEV translates this as:

    I am overcome with sorrow,
    Encourage me, as you have promised to do.

    Psalm 119:28 (CEV)

    The REB, one of my favorites, reads.

    Because of misery I cannot rest;
    renew my strength in accordance with your promise.

    Psalm 119:28 (REB)

    I don’t want to follow all the trails, but another thing I do is look for the same word in other passages. I’ll just do one passage for one word, the word for “grief” or “misery.”

    Stupid offspring bring sorrow to parents,
    and no father has joy in a boorish son.

    Proverbs 17:21 (REB)

    The word translated “sorrow” in this case is the same Hebrew word as used for “misery” by the same translation in Psalm 119:28. Something to think about, perhaps!

    In the end I notice that however much the psalmist talks about a variety of things he is making an effort to do, we frequently come back to simply calling upon God according to God’s word.

    What is your most frequent strategy in times of trouble? Do you call on God first, or is God your last resort?

  • Psalm 119:27 – From Precepts to Wonders

    Psalm 119:27 – From Precepts to Wonders

    Explain to me the way of your precepts
    and I will tell of your wonderful acts.

    We tend to think of particular rules or principles for living as fairly boring, somewhat annoying, and often unreasonably restrictive. We seem to live in a debate between what we ought to do and what we actually do. Even the most law and order oriented people I know have rules they don’t feel they need to keep.

    As Christians, we come at law largely from the perspective of salvation. Our works cannot save us. Yet many of us are so oriented to law that we have to work that back into the equation again, such that eventually our Christian lives are taken up by the question of how to keep the rules and what might happen if we don’t. Some of the loudest voices I have heard with regard to grace and justification by grace through faith turn to the worst sort of works as they attempt to produce–and urge others to produce–the supposed fruit of that faith. (Hint: You can’t. God can.)

    Christianity becomes for so many of us a process of producing “good church-going people” who are “pillars of their community” and as such good people are surely going to heaven because they are keeping up with all the things their culture believes are the proper things to do.

    Well, right until these pillars fall down because they really aren’t such examples of everything that is good and right.

    And then we, as Christians, announce that the Hebrew scriptures are all about law and empty of grace because we can find examples in Israelite history of just such pillars of the community, and we can find rules that look a lot like they might describe the behavior of good “temple-going people” who are pillars of their community.

    Like David.

    Oops! For those who actually read the Hebrew scriptures (in translation is OK!), this image really doesn’t work. Not if you pay attention.

    I’m currently listening on Audible to the translation of the Hebrew Bible by Robert Alter as I walk on the treadmill. (I moved my after-dark walks and too-cold walks to the treadmill!) Tonight I was listening to the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12). If David was a man after God’s own heart, I would imagine some grace was involved.

    But as we look at this passage, we are again looking at a much broader understanding of “law.” Note that in Psalm 119, we have at least two more general terms for law, Torah (instruction), and Word, as in God’s Word. Translating these as “law” gives modern English readers the wrong impression. As I read, I see in the term “Torah” a depiction of God’s guidance and interaction with people, i.e. an extended story of relationship. It’s about who God’s people are. In “Word” I hear the creator of the universe who is revealed in word and deed. Neither of these terms describes a code of law, such as Hammurabi’s code, or your state’s traffic code.

    What they do describe is a very deep relationship and an identity, God’s people, that becomes the key identity for those to whom it applies.

    In the New Testament book of Hebrews we have this same nature and identity, both Torah and Word, wrapped into the person of Jesus. I think it is worthwhile for us to know as Christians that when a Jew affirms loyalty to Torah, this is no more (or less) an affirmation of loyalty to a set of rules than ours is when we affirm loyalty to Jesus.

    Now Jews and Christians can both be legalists, forgetting Who it is they serve, and getting stuck on details, but this shouldn’t be blamed on scripture. We humans are like that. We like to get tangled up on the little things that we can understand and handle. Or at least that we think we can.

    But God is above and beyond that. God has a purpose for us that is so far above any of our thoughts that we can’t even imagine it.

    I’m drawn back again to Isaiah 55:

    For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways.
    This is the word of the LORD.
    But as the heavens are high above the earth,
    so are my ways high above your ways
    and my thoughts above your thoughts.

    Isaiah 55:8-9 (REB)

    And here in Psalm 119:27 we have the psalmist asking God to help him understand God’s precepts, and the result will be that he will speak of God’s wonderful acts. The reason is that everything God has to say points to God as God the creator and the author of all that is wonderful.

    And it all starts with trying to understand the little things, the precepts. Baby steps. Trembling, unstable, stumbling, hands reaching out along the path to wonder and amazement.

    What’s your next step?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:26 – Just Talking

    Psalm 119:26 – Just Talking

    I tell you my stuff and you answer me.
    Teach me your statutes.

    I frequently comment that “always and everywhere there is stuff.” There is stuff to do, stuff not to do, stuff that I did, and stuff that I didn’t do. Not to mention the physical stuff to keep, stuff to get rid of, and stuff I have no idea how to handle. I used “stuff” here to translate “my ways.”

    One of the fascinating things about the psalms is the spiritual life that is reflected by the poetry. These are not the trite poems of people whose relationship with God is shallow, casual, or even easy. These poems come from the depths, and to reflect those depths, they must come from a heart with depth of experience.

    “Lord, I tell you my stuff and you answer me.” That’s powerful in itself. So many times when I’m talking about prayer, teaching about prayer, or discussing prayer in a group the entire conversation centers around things we ask for and whether or not we’ll get what we want. We talk about praise and thanksgiving, but often that’s largely as a thing that we need to do so our prayers are more effective. “Effective” is defined as getting what we want.

    This verse is talking about something really effective. It is prayer that works. It is prayer that is powerful. “I tell you my stuff and you answer me.” In theology-speak, I tell Almighty God what I care about and Almighty God actually talks to me about it. This isn’t about having the gift of prophecy, or getting messages to pass to colleagues with a “God told me” and a superior holy expression on my face.

    It’s having a conversation with something incomprehensibly beyond myself.

    I think the psalmist speaks from that experience, and that’s as important to me as the direct teaching of the text.

    And what does he want to know when he has this conversation with God? “Teach me your statutes.” Many of us would have different requests, but again, the psalmist is asking as profound a question as he can. “Maker of the universe, tell me how this works. Tell me who you are.” And bit by bit, he learns more.

    Some wonder how he can talk about the law for 176 verses. Why all this creative writing to tell about the law? But that is to misunderstand what he means by “law.” He’s talking about Torah. God’s actions. God’s commands. God’s relationship to God’s people. And another word used for it is Word. God’s Word that created everything.

    Inside our wedding rings, Jody and I had inscribed the reference Ephesians 3:14-21. Paul here reflects this same type of experience and the goal. Let me quote just verses 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 of Christ’s love, and to know it, though it is beyond knowledge. So may you be filled with the very fullness of God.

    Ephesians 3:18-19 (REB, emphasis mine)

    Seek to hear ever more of what God can communicate to you.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Psalm 119:25 – In the Dust

    Psalm 119:25 – In the Dust

    My soul is down in the dust.
    Give me life according to your word.

    Psalm 119 is an interesting–and biblical–combination of human action and dependence on Divine action. Verse 25, the first verse of the third section, is on the dependence side of the scale.

    If you’re trying to formulate theology, the variety here might be troubling. If you’re human, and having human struggles, they probably just sound realistic. I’ve had many days when I started out with determination, such as “I have kept” as in verse 22, and an hour or so later I’m at “I’m crawling around here in the dust, Lord!”

    God can and will work with either one. God is not limited by the ups and downs of human emotions.

    And the two Hebrew words of the second half of this verse are quite powerful: Give me life “according to your word.”

    “By the word of YHWH were the heavens made; by the breath of his mouth, all their host!” (Psalm 33:6) It’s the same word by which God gives life that God also created the heavens. The same breath that God breathed into the nostrils of a man made of dust–not just down in it, made of it–was the source of all that exists.

    When our determination to get everything done and to do it right falls afoul of our various weaknesses, interruptions, and weariness, we have all that to call upon.

    Will we remember that next time the load seems too heavy?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)