My Psalm

How wonderful you are, Lord!

How amazing your world,

How awesome you love me.

Who am I to be loved by the Lord?

Do I ever really care about you?

What do I have to offer?

How much do we really have in common?

Surely there can be no other reason for loving me except that you love me.

Your world is startling and intricate.

I’ve made it a joke before: “God must love details, he made so many of them.”

Yet true indeed: How many things you have made!

And I am one — with so many things inside me.

Organs, skin, blood, down to myriads and myriads of atoms,

to one another.

I am a wonder. Yet so is my neighbor.

Even the annoying, hateful ones.

Help me remember how you hung there in agony

Asking that they be forgiven. That I be forgiven.

And I don’t understand why.

You who say “Let there be” and the thing is,

Why wasn’t forgiveness that simple?

A bloodless, painless “Undo” of our self-centering, self-defining egos.

Yet that isn’t what you chose.

You descended into our world, held firm through pain and agony.

Forgave, said it was finished, gave up your Spirit

Then took it back again.

Hallelujah, worthy is the Lamb that was slain,

To receive glory and honor and wisdom and power.

this was inspired by these two articles:
The Gaping Hole in the Modern Missions Movement: Part 1 Part 2

Wild and crazy promises

Psalm 91 sounds quite clear. "If you say 'the LORD is my refuge,' and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways."

 Plain and simple. Commit yourself to God and nothing will ever go wrong. Is that really what it says?

 Satan used these verses to tempt Jesus. " Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’"

 "Don't put the Lord your God to the test," Jesus replied, quoting another Scripture.

 Did Jesus think of Psalm 91 again when he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane? There he was, having given himself to God, not putting God to the test but doing what he was supposed to do. Wasn't it time to claim the promise -- "no harm will come to you, the angels will watch over you." But he did not, he said "Not my will, but yours be done."

 Paul adds one more wrinkle to interpreting the promises. "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ." Jesus brings the fulfillment of the promises. The promise that no harm will come to you if you give yourself to God? That is the promise that Jesus came, died and rose again, guaranteeing us eternal life, and ushering us into the Kingdom as God's adopted children. That is the optic for understanding the promises, the wild and crazy truth awaiting us.

Praying the Psalms

I didn't take naturally to the Psalms. They are poetry, and I'm a prose kind of guy. Logic and reason -- left to myself I'll head for Paul's epistles time after time.

Plus being poetry, they are kind of raw. Lord, I'm all alone here, why aren't you doing anything to help? My enemy is really bad, and I've been good. Make his kids into homeless orphans.

But in the last few years, I realize how much I need the rawness. I am pretty emotional too, I just hide it. Angry and upset? Don't express it, maybe it will go away. While not acting out my negative emotions is a valuable skill in social life, pretending they aren't there when I'm alone with God is not. God has used the Psalms to teach me when I pray to say what's on my heart, not what I believe should be on my heart. Because when I express my heart to God, he helps calm me much more than pretending I don't really feel that way can calm me.

And the Psalms, although raw and honest, are not just ranting.  They can go from "Lord, don't you care that I'm all alone here," to "You are the great one we all hope for" in just one or two verses. (See Psalm 22:1-3).

When I'm feeling something that isn't right, pretending I don't feel it doesn't help much.
Lecturing myself why I shouldn't feel it is only slightly better.
Laying it before God and saying "help me with this feeling" works much better.