JOY ON THE WAY

By the time this is published, the clumps of early-spring grape hyacinth by my front walk will be limp, their stalks shriveled to threads. But they'll be back again next year, shooting up as the weather whispers the coming of spring. Their resiliency amazes me, as some of the rock salt thrown on the icy walk next to them during winter surely contaminates their soil. But they still return, offering their brilliant purple “beads” as a springtime delight.

For whatever reason, while reading Colossians 2:7—a wonderful admonition and benediction—those little plants came to mind:

Just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

The analogy isn't perfect; grape hyacinth have a very short blooming cycle. But they're true to their nature, responding in God's amazing plant growth cycle to push from their dormant roots with delicate, lovely blooms.

If grape hyacinth could talk, I wonder if they'd complain a bit about their long dormant season. I'm reminded of David's woe-is-me Psalm 13 as he kept running and hiding from those who opposed him. Psalm 13 starts out with almost a whining tone:

How long, O LORD, will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have horror in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

David is definitely down in the dumps. He's wondering if his foes might succeed in taking his life. But he ends on a note of hope against hope, of trusting the trustworthiness of God:

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me. (vv. 5-6)

The Hebrew word translated “unfailing love” is chesed and used of God's steadfast, faithful love, such as seen in His covenant relationship with His people. It's a whole package of amazing qualities: loving-kindness, mercy, and loyalty that is unwavering in challenges of difficulties. In English, we just don't have an adequate synonym for God's awesome, immeasurable love.

Do we experience hardships in this life? Slumps? Discouragement? Harm and danger? Yes. Is God aware of them? Absolutely. Are we supposed to kick at them and blame God? No. It's better instead to stop, look and be in awe of how He works through our trials and hard places. He knows “how long,” and it will be just the right interval.

Possibly, on that hard-to-travel path, we'll find whispers of His goodness. Little blessings, Glimpses of joy. Like those delicate beaded hyacinth blooming by my home every spring. Reminding me that, after every winter, God will stir the earth and send them forth. True to His character as faithful—to me.

LOVING-KINDNESS! (Psalm 118)

This trellis arch of climbing roses is a summer delight--

and a reminder that His banner over me is love.

(Part of an ongoing series on the 48 psalms commended for study during times of feeling "down," from pastor/counselor David Seamands' book, Healing for Damaged Emotions)

Critical, demeaning, abusive--enduring such behaviors inevitably contributes to feeling emotionally and spiritually down. But Psalm 118 tries to define the healing potion, a quality that’s spelled chesed or hesed in Hebrew and requires many English words to define. The common one is “loving-kindness,” but in reference to God it embraces His steadfast love, grace, mercy, faithfulness, goodness and devotion.  Want a challenge? Trying writing a hymn about that!

Surprise: someone did, and it’s found in Psalm 118. Five times (1-4 and 29) it proclaims:

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love [chesed] endures forever.

BIG THANKS

Scholars believe Psalm 118 was composed around 400 B.C. when an estimated 50,000 Jews returned from seven decades of Babylonian captivity, only to find their homeland and its crown city, Jerusalem, in ruins. First, they put up a worship structure. It wasn’t as glorious as what Solomon had built, but it gave them a worship center. Later, with Nehemiah's leadership, they restored the walls that provided safety to the city.

Psalm 118 was also composed with public worship in mind.  Its repeated phrases suggest how a worship leader, chorus, and common people all had a part in what might be tagged a responsive “liturgy.” As a child growing up in a liturgical church, I participated in this ancient practice. When this "responsive" or liturgical psalm was introduced centuries ago, no doubt its inclusion in worship brought vibrant and enthusiastic participation. I can almost hear the worship leader’s voice ringing out the first phrase and the hundreds of worshippers shouting back the end of it. Wow.

What’s this have to do with getting through depression? This: that worship gets our eyes off our negative circumstances and onto the praiseworthy chesed of God. Psalm 118 reminds us to find joy in what the Lord has done. Choosing joy means refusing to harp about the trivialities until they grow into trials and despair.

BIG IDEAS

Besides such long, liturgical prayers, God hears short, desperate, and bold prayers. “In my anguish,” the psalmist said, “I cried to the LORD, and he answered by setting me free. The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (vv 5-6). God doesn’t necessarily snap His fingers and take away problems, but He promises to be our Refuge and Helper. Four times the psalmist speaks of calling on “the Name of the Lord” (vv. 10-12, 26). To do so is not some magic trick, but a deliberate turning over a problem to Him as capable of handling it.

The psalm also looked prophetically forward to a Messiah. When Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, people heralded Him with waving palm branches and chanting the words of Psalm 118:26:

Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord!

A few days later they would yell, “Crucify him.” Yet all was part of God’s plan to bridge the sin-gap between Himself and humans. We know now that the psalmist’s remark about the rejected stone becoming the critical temple “capstone” really referred to Jesus Christ. The cross put the last essential piece in place.

Trials will come in this life. Sometimes they’ll really knock us down:

I was pushed back and about to fall… (v. 13a)

But hang onto the “but”:

 ….but the LORD helped me. The Lord has become my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.(vv.13b-14)

And all of that goes back to God’s chesed. He loves us more than we can imagine. Even the days we feel less than celebratory, He waits. The celebration parade, with a risen Jesus at the front, will happen. Count on it.

Making 'Psense' of Psalms--Psalm 138: Purpose

Part of an ongoing series on selected psalms.
Life's unknowns stretched ahead of me like a road with no markers that summer. I was finishing up a graduate degree that I hoped would lead to a new career. But as the weeks ticked away with no job offer, and with my college housing soon to end, I struggled to trust God. I was 31, single, orphaned (so no option of going “home” to sit it out), and wondering if God would allow me to experience homelessness. That’s when Psalm 138:8 burned into my heart: “The LORD will accomplish what concerns me” (NASB).  I will never forget those humbling prayer times, kneeling by my desk chair and confessing, “I’m up against impossibilities, Lord, but I believe you will accomplish what concerns me.”  With just days to spare, He brought both an offer of a job I’d dreamed about and temporary housing with a company employee.

Psalm 138:8 still speaks to us as it focuses on God’s exalted and loving character in our trials. The historical background is God’s promise to David to raise up from his family a dynasty that would “endure forever before me” (2 Samuel 7:16), unlike that of the first king, Saul. During Saul’s stormy reign, God told the prophet Samuel to anoint an unlikely, godly shepherd boy, David, as king-in-waiting. From David’s children would come successive kings. Even though over the next thousand years, Jewish history got quite messy with bad kings and deportations, there would be a “forever king” from David’s line.  Matthew 1 and Luke 3 trace the lineage from David to a humble carpenter named Joseph, whose virgin betrothed, Mary, would bear Jesus, “Immanuel,” God-with-us. Or as Luke reported the angel’s message to young Mary: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end” (Luke 1:32-33). The crucified, risen, and ascended Christ will return to this embattled earth to reign!

PRAISE HIM!

Living in a democracy where we vote for leaders, good or bad, we tend to forget that monarchies have problems, too. Royal families can get complicated (Henry VIII’s many wives, Edward abdicating for love). Even though David couldn’t see into the far future, he was ecstatic that God chose to keep the Davidic line going. That’s why Psalm 138 opens on such an emphatic note of praise:
I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart; before the “gods” I will sing your praise.
I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and faithfulness…(vv. 1-2a)
The word “praise” in these verses and in verse 4 comes from the Hebrew yadah, which means “to stretch out the hand, confess.” This was no mindless recitation. David put everything he had into praising God. He wasn’t fazed by any local false gods or offending their deluded worshipers. He was God-focused only. He was also humble. There was no pomp-and-circumstance (“here comes the king to church”). He bowed down in adoration and humility as he praised God.

A key Hebrew word, chesed, almost gets short-changed by its English translation as “love and faithfulness.”  It is a loaded word, referring to God’s covenant love expressed through constancy and fidelity to His people. In praising God for His chesed, David was thanking God for all He is and does. David was expressing the truth that anything good in his life came as a result of God’s chesed toward him.

EMPOWERED!

As a monarch, David had huge prayer requests, and he saw dramatic answers to prayer. He kept the perspective that solutions didn’t come through his cleverness or military strategizing, but the power and constancy of God:
For you have exalted above all things your name and your word.
When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted. (v. 3)
We know God by many names that express His character, and we have learned of them through His Word, the Bible. I am reminded of that on nights when sleep doesn’t come easily. I’ve learned to turn my frustrations over insomnia into praise sessions, speaking back to God His names and attributes, as I have learned them in scripture. False gods simply cannot match all the dimensions of His character.

David apparently had a dramatic answer to prayer, prompting this psalm. Whatever the situation, he had to respond with an uncharacteristic boldness. Similarly, the apostle Paul wrote of times of weakness when God gave him the strength and boldness to persevere. Instead of answering Paul’s prayer to be healed of his debilitating ailment (whatever it was), the Lord Jesus came to Him in a special way (a vision?) and said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”  (2 Corinthians 12:9). From that point, Paul decided not to fuss about his weaknesses and hardships, but instead focus on what Christ could achieve through them.

ADORED!

Today’s headlines of violence and trouble remind us that knees bow to different and hostile philosophies (gods), willing to kill and die for them. But David had the vision of a time when all the kings of the earth would praise the Lord, even sing of the glory of the Lord. This far-forward look to Christ’s final reign as Messiah is what Paul also spoke of with loving anticipation:
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

HOLY AND LOWLY

As if to correct the impression that God is so high and holy that He doesn’t care to bother with lowly people, David adds this comforting truth:
Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar. (Psalm 138:6)
David adds, in a verse reminiscent of Psalm 23: Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life; you stretch out your hands against the anger of my foes, with your right hand you save me. (v. 7)

My son-in-law photographed a repairman working on my
daughter's violin. It reminded me how we need to yield
to the repairing touch of the Master Craftsman of our lives
so that His purposes are achieved.

PURPOSES

For me, the psalm’s key phrase is in verse 8: “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.” An older translation says the Lord “will perfect” what concerns me, which can be confusing if perceived as saying God will straighten out problems to make my life “perfect.”  But I have learned that He uses the struggles, disappointments and pain to craft my character. David’s work as king was not without conflict—far from it! In this psalm, he alludes to opposition several times. But he also knew that God had purposed for him to have a royal legacy. We often forget that we, too, have a royal legacy:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)
As David ends the psalm, praising God’s enduring love, he adds an interesting postscript: “Do not abandon the works of your hands” (v. 8). This dusting of doubt reminds us that David faced real dangers. Yet he believed that God would direct his life as long as he sought to do God’s will. Or as the apostle Paul said, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
Next: Psalm 139