Thoughts

This is a wonderful little Psalm, a very idiomatic cry for help from the Lord.  Each line uses a new image to plead for the Lord’s help.  The Psalmist experiences isolation and degradation at the hands of people, and expects no better to come from them. Left on his own among the ungodly, he doesn’t stand a chance.  He can only look at them and say pathetically, “How much longer is this going to last?” Amazingly, he also despairs for the sake of his troublesome neighbors.  He knows that they are chasing after empty things, and sustaining it by their love for lies.  His advice: “Go to your room, sit down on your bed, shut up, and think about where your life is headed!”

The psalm also uses this wonderful little Hebrew idiom for being in trouble and receiving help.  Literally, it’s something like: “When I am in a narrow place, you make it wide for me”  I translated it above as “When I’m in a tight spot, you make space for me.” I love this idiom, because it has such a tangible feeling associated with it.  Ever felt like the world was just closing in on you, and you just needed a little space? I can get with that! Sometimes I just need what this psalm leads me to cry out for—just a little wriggling room.

At the close, this Psalm leads me to being prayerful over the broken world around me.  It leads me to cry out for the broken world, even as it hurts me. I bring the world, unwilling as it may be, into my prayer: “Lift the light of your face upon us, O Lord!” It really would make me happy to see the world filled with abundance by God’s hand.

[This is a part of a long series on the Psalms.  I want to translate and meditate on each of the Psalms, at about a Psalm every week or two. It should keep me busy for a while.]

I shot a little video of some Cedar lane folks reading through Jesus’ sermon on the plain, as a way of helping us hear it.  I want to invite you to settle in, hear these words, and spend some time meditating on those questions. May God bless the hearing of his word.

Psalm and Narrative

This is a psalm of hope against despair, a confession of deep faith in the face of great opposition.  It locates itself as a meditation of David during his darkest hour, facing the treasonous rebellion of his own son. I think that text is meant to give a location not just of the writing of the psalm, but more importantly, how the psalm is to be read.  The psalm is intended to be read and prayed in the context of a particular narrative moment.  This is a great insight into the nature of biblical narrative!  The story itself of Absalom’s rebellion, dark as t is, can become the story of the reader and a tool for prayer.  We don’t just pray the Psalm. The Psalm unlocks the narrative itself to be prayer. Perhaps we can even read the entire psalter this way! As the language of the Psalms penetrates our hearts and we fold its prayer language into our own lives as praying beings, we can become more adept at reading biblical narratives, because we see the Psalms in the stories.

It works the other way as well.  We have to know the Absalom story in order for this Psalm to have its full effect, and this can be said of the rest of the Psalter as well.  The Psalms can’t be read independently of the Narratives, prophetic traditions, wisdom literature and covenant documents that make up the rest of the  Bible. These are not worship poems to be used independently of the narratives of the community in which they were created. The Psalms are a critical part of how that community responded to the experiences to which the other biblical books give testimony.  The community that owns the rest of the Bible becomes a worshipping community as the Psalms help us take the content of the narratives and our own narratives into the house of the Lord. Sometimes the Psalm lead us to confront the Lord, holding him to his promises. Other times they lead us to acknowledge the wisdom of the Lord and his way of becoming righteous. Sometimes the Psalms lead us to acknowledge what the Lord has already done for us.  Sometimes they lead us to cry out in desperation for the rescue that can only come from him.

Rescue

This Psalm does exactly that, leading us to cry out in the face of great opposition for the help that can only come from God. It helps us to banish fear, even if that fear is pretty reasonable. This psalm speaks to our need for rescue, or salvation—and who hasn’t experienced it? How many of us have never felt surrounded, alone, desperate? The Psalm recognize that basic feeling, and confirm it, but that isn’t the point.  The point of the psalm is coupling that emotion with faith in the Lord’s rescue.  It leads us not to simply cry out (although other Psalms do), but to cry out in faith. It sees the hopeful future of help from the Lord, acknowledging that even in the dire present the Lord has sustained life. “I awoke because the Lord helps me.” In this simple way, the Psalmist sees his own experience of salvation already owned and realized, but still needs a greater salvation, a fuller rescue from the enemies that surround and threaten.  The psalmist is vulnerable, but it is this vulnerability that allows for God to be the glory of the psalmist, allows God the opportunity to lift his head and provide his trademark rescue.  the affirmation of the end of the psalm, that the rescue belongs to the Lord, is a powerful affirmation of this aspect of God’s identity.  God is a rescuer.  He is a savior, someone who pulls people out of the direst circumstances.

Whoa.

That is a hot burning Psalm.  It’s threatening, menacing. Intensely burning with anger, the Psalmist is defiant here, backed into a corner with his fists raised.  He’s ready for a fight.  This isn’t a desperate plea for God’s help, but a derisive taunt towards enemies of God’s chosen king.  The message is clear: God is on my side. Don’t mess with me.

As I’ve meditated and prayed over this Psalm this week, I have a hard time getting that kind of boldness up. I’m careful about being too self-assured or too confident that I am in fact fighting on the Lord’s side of things, and I think that deserves care and prudence.  But am I so cautious that it prevents me from being bold in the conviction that I’m fighting for the right directions?

I’m not altogether with this Psalm yet.  So my meditations on it are really incomplete, filled with too much timidity.  I’m really in awe of the confidence of this Psalm. Truthfully, I fear what my life would be like if it were dominated by this type of thinking!

Be Advised

The most scathing part of the Psalm to me is the turn in verse 10.  My own translation reads:

So, now, kings— be smart.

Accept the reprimand, you rulers of the earth.

It’s a turn of power.  The seemingly powerless psalmist is laying his cards on the table, and believes himself to be the strongest one in the room because of the Lord’s support.  The Lord looms in the background, like a musclebound bouncer who is itching for a fight.  There it is, there are the facts as the Psalmist sees them, and once he lays them on the table, out int he open, he boldly says to his opponents, “Don’t be stupid.  Get with the program here.”

The Source of Strength here is unquestionably the Lord.  This is perhaps the hinge point of the entire Psalter, the Lord as the source of strength.  He is the source of the strength we have, and the source of the strength we don’t.  In this Psalm, that strength produces boldness to the point of absurdity, underlining the trust the Psalmist has with the only source of strength he thinks matters.  In his view, everything else is literally a poor joke, a mockable play at power.

My small group has been talking about different kinds of prayer disciplines for the past month, and it’s prompted me to work through Psalms in a more deliberate way.  For the past couple of days I’ve been mulling over the Hebrew text of Psalm 1, eventually coming to the translation above.  Below are some of the meditative thoughts the Psalm has led me to so far this week.

Surroundings

This is a wisdom type psalm, or a Psalm of orientation, and so it more or less flows out of the way the world normally works, the way things should work.  It’s a generalization.  I wouldn’t have to poke around to hard to see exceptions here, but when you look at the opening verses about the wisdom of not surrounding yourself with wicked, evil, cynical people, it’s hard to argue.  I don’t think it’s an argument for cloistering ourselves up and insulating ourselves from the world, but a warning about the consequences of taking on the viewpoints, behaviors and assumptions of people without making some sort of judgment about who we’re listening to.

Personally, it’s the bit about sitting in the seat of cynics that has challenged me the most as I’ve meditated on this part of the Psalm.  The old translations use “scornful”, or “mockers”, or “scoffers”, which are just outdated enough to lose their bite.  When I started reading the word as “cynics”, it became more personal in a hurry. There is simply so much of this attitude, whatever you want to call it, in every corner of our culture. The spirit of mocking, judgmental cynicism is remarkably contagious and corrosive to the human heart, and who among us hasn’t felt the pull of all that negative gravity? You can’t drink all that poison and still thrive.  There’s a place for pushing away from those directions, and choosing, deliberately, to live with a different set of attitudes and assumptions. It might be hard work, but worthwhile.  It’s a path of blessing, whatever that means.

Blessed

I’m not really sure what that means – blessing.  That first word in the Psalm is fairly easy to translate, but it hard to get my mind around.  What does it mean to be blessed?  Things are just going to generally go your way? You’re going to feel good, or be lucky? Better parking spots or quicker lines at the DMV? Obviously it’s a positive designation–I mean, who wouldn’t want to be blessed? But still, the Psalm leaves me wondering what the content of that word “blessed” is when it just stands all on its own in a context like this. Reading the Psalm, the best I can come up with is that “blessed” in this context means something like “stable”, “secure”, “possessing meaning”, and “successful”, all rolled into one word.  Basically, “blessed” is the guy everyone wants to be. (Side note, culturally laden: The Dos Equis and Old Spice commercials might be seen as parodies of “blessed” Ha!.)

The safest part of the blessing bestowed here is that is eventual.  It relies on the watchful eye of the Lord to bring it about, but also just seems to be the natural order of things (not necessarily separate concepts here). As improbable as it seems, the psalm affirms that it is worthwhile to stay the course and pursue a life of righteousness and integrity.  That idea is easily questioned, and is often questioned even within the Psalter. Nonetheless, this psalm offers me the words to prayerfully consider in integrity as a source of blessing, and my cynicism and wickedness as threats to my own safety, security, and purposefulness. As I pray trough the Psalm, I find myself saying to God, “Please, let it be so.  Let it be true. I want to be the righteous man, and wholly desire the blessing. Let it only be true…”