Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm119:1-56: Walking, stumbling

Headlines about our Central Washington firestorms became personal with a phone call the morning of July 18. Made from a borrowed phone, the call came from a family friend who said, “The fire took my home.” About 11 p.m. the previous night, a neighbor roused him with frantic knocking and the warning that flames were close to their little rural neighborhood. He escaped with his truck and the clothes he hurriedly put on. A bachelor in his early seventies, the only child of parents long dead, he turned to us in this devastating event that destroyed the simple home he’d built himself in a rural area.

What was left of our friend's home.

What would you do if you were numb with unexpected, incomprehensible loss?  At the time I’m writing this, more than 300 homes about an hour’s drive north sit in ashes from this monster wildfire. Their owners never imagined that such devastation would come their way. And never did I expect my study of Psalm 119 to resound so strongly with these circumstances:
My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. (119:28)
Found in the psalm’s fourth stanza (verses 25-32), built on the Hebrew letter “Daleth,” it’s part of the picture of someone who’s down-down-down. The stanza begins, “I am laid low in the dust,” which in the original Hebrew speaks of “cleaving to the dust,” or, as we might say, “eating the dust.” He is flat-out humbled and sorrowful. But he doesn’t stay face down in utter despair. He asks God to renew him, teach him, help him understand, strengthen him, and keep him from “deceitful ways.” He wants to rise out of this. In amazing contrast to the dust-biting stance of the stanza’s first verse, he concludes:
I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free. (119:32)
The word translated “run” reminds us that the Christian life is not a reluctant walk, but a race, as Hebrews 12:1 says: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Even when life throws us against the wall (like marathon runners experience when they think they can’t keep going), God says, “Keep going, I am with you.”

Some truths from other stanzas of Psalm 119:

1. Aleph (1-8): Oh, that my ways were steadfast in obeying your decrees! (v. 5). Against such yearning stand quotes like this by Robert Murray McCheyne, passionate missionary to native Americans in the early 1800s, who died before he reached 30: “According to your holiness, so shall be your success. A holy man is an awesome weapon in the hands of God.”

2. Beth (9-16): How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you (vv. 9-11). One mark of youth culture is conformity to “do what everybody else does.” Today, that includes the shallow values of electronic social media, and the false idea that the number of Facebook “friends” you have reveals your personal worth. Instead, we need what this verse says and fresh reminders of how it worked out in the lives of spiritual giants of the past. We have the legacy of people like Jim Elliot, martyred in the 1950s alongside an Ecuadorian river. His biography, Shadow of the Almighty, prepared by his widow, is a classic insight of an all-out faith that included commitment to scripture memory.

 

3. Gimel (17-24): Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law (v. 18).  The apostle Paul expressed a similar yearning: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17, and though I won’t quote the rest, verses 18-23 complete this amazing prayer for spiritual insight). 

4. Daleth (25-32): Already covered, above. I would also add the Lord Jesus’ encouraging word to Paul in the midst of his trials: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

5. He (33-40): Turn my eyes away from worthless things; renew my life according to your word (v. 37). The psalmist wants to keep faithful to the end (v. 1) and he wants his heart and mind filled with things of eternal significance. The phrase “worthless things” (translated “vanity” in older versions) is from a word that also refers to useless or desolating things.  I have “TV” written in the margin of my Bible, and that could include other fluffy electronic and internet entertainment. Along those lines, the apostle James decried those who had a little Bible knowledge but didn’t act on it to change their lives (James 1:22).

6. Waw (41-48): I will speak of your statutes before king and will not be put to shame (v. 46). I’ve heard the term “Arctic River Christians,” explained as those “frozen at the mouth” in sharing their faith. That wasn’t true of Paul: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). For historical proof of that, go to Acts 24-26, where he laid out the Gospel before the enthroned Festus and Agrippa.

7. Zayin (49-56): Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I lodge (v. 54). Paul, along with Silas, illustrated this remarkably as they sat in a filthy Philippian jail after their arrests and severe beatings: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25). The rest of the story was an earthquake and the conversion of the Philippian jailer.  When we lift up the Lord in negative circumstances, people take note.

Next: stanzas 8-14.