This morning I re-memorized Psalm 1 using a memory palace approach. But there were two value-added ideas or truths that I had never enjoyed before that made this a powerful word to me this morning (and, I hope, for the year to come and for my life from now on).
First, I was just reading over Jackie's shoulder as she was looking at a web page about missionary re-entry, things some former missionary had written about what she wished someone had told her when she came back to the USA. I guess I should look up the page and read it, but I only saw one bit of advice to returning missionaries flash by on the screen: "Give yourself permission to just be." I recognized it as good advice in that context, and if then, why not now?
In reaction to this calming word, I recognize in myself the need to always be doing, and not just to do, but to do significantly. I find myself planning, even during days "off", what to do next. Especially around Christmas I begin to contemplate what I can do in the coming year that will make my life and my contribution more significant. All this doing, and planning to do, can be extremely tiring and even hopeless when it seems that my doing is not significant enough. May God give me wisdom and grace to give myself permission, whenever appropriate, to just be.
In reading the previous paragraph, I can't help but notice the self-absorption in the search for personal significance. What about bringing glory to God? And if that is the real goal, is it not possible that can happen better through being available for quiet times than always in a rush to do the next thing? May God help me to fully process this insight and make new habits that will help me conform to it.
There is a fear of not doing enough that gets immediately aroused by the impulse to rest. I have a to-do list with over 100 items on it that I tend to revisit daily, hoping to knock something off even during holidays. But I also know, from lying in several mornings during the holidays, that the fully rested cannot stay still. There is still motion and accomplishment ahead. May God help me, when I inevitably go beyond just being to doing, to do the right things in the right way to fulfill His purpose in me.
So how does this tie to Psalm 1? This is the second value-added insight of the morning. The Waltke translation footnotes on the first verse (I was reading from _The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Commentary_) show that "how blessed" in the Hebrew language and cultural setting would have meant "how rewarding is the life of" -- not just blessed as in happy or materially prosperous. A rewarding life is the very thing that has driven me to consider and reject quantities of possible New Year's resolutions. It is what I (maybe all of us?) seem to be hardwired to want. If I have been clever enough in my life to see that the money, sex, and power that many chase after are really means to this end and not ends in themselves, that hasn't helped much if I reach for the end without any means to achieve it. And I'm afraid I've made God, or at least religious endeavor, the means. Whenever God is the means rather than the end, idolatry is present.
True as that may be, it is a bit of a false trail for today's meditation. I am hardwired to desire a rewarding life, and I believe also hardwired to find it in relationship with God. It is not, after all, idolatry to desire it, since He himself has given me the desire and He reveals the path to fulfilling it. The path is revealed in Psalm 1 as meditating on the law of I AM as a way of connecting to Him and getting in sync with Him, and rejecting the walking, standing, and sitting according to all the ways we try to substitute our own inner rules and urges for His. The rewarding life I want is on offer, and He has provided the means.
Giving myself permission to "just be" has in it an echo of "I AM," not that I can become self-sufficient as He is but that my being is to be connected to His Being (and is not all about my doing). Giving myself permission to just be is an obedience to the first verse of Psalm 1. It forgoes the walking in bad counsel, standing in bad paths, and sitting with a bad attitude that marks the unrighteous. In verse 2, it is the connection to I AM, and not all my doing, that leads to the rewarding life.
What follows is Psalm 1, consciously not word-for-word but closely paraphrased from my memorization of the ESV, as shaped by the commentary mentioned above:
First, I was just reading over Jackie's shoulder as she was looking at a web page about missionary re-entry, things some former missionary had written about what she wished someone had told her when she came back to the USA. I guess I should look up the page and read it, but I only saw one bit of advice to returning missionaries flash by on the screen: "Give yourself permission to just be." I recognized it as good advice in that context, and if then, why not now?
In reaction to this calming word, I recognize in myself the need to always be doing, and not just to do, but to do significantly. I find myself planning, even during days "off", what to do next. Especially around Christmas I begin to contemplate what I can do in the coming year that will make my life and my contribution more significant. All this doing, and planning to do, can be extremely tiring and even hopeless when it seems that my doing is not significant enough. May God give me wisdom and grace to give myself permission, whenever appropriate, to just be.
In reading the previous paragraph, I can't help but notice the self-absorption in the search for personal significance. What about bringing glory to God? And if that is the real goal, is it not possible that can happen better through being available for quiet times than always in a rush to do the next thing? May God help me to fully process this insight and make new habits that will help me conform to it.
There is a fear of not doing enough that gets immediately aroused by the impulse to rest. I have a to-do list with over 100 items on it that I tend to revisit daily, hoping to knock something off even during holidays. But I also know, from lying in several mornings during the holidays, that the fully rested cannot stay still. There is still motion and accomplishment ahead. May God help me, when I inevitably go beyond just being to doing, to do the right things in the right way to fulfill His purpose in me.
So how does this tie to Psalm 1? This is the second value-added insight of the morning. The Waltke translation footnotes on the first verse (I was reading from _The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Commentary_) show that "how blessed" in the Hebrew language and cultural setting would have meant "how rewarding is the life of" -- not just blessed as in happy or materially prosperous. A rewarding life is the very thing that has driven me to consider and reject quantities of possible New Year's resolutions. It is what I (maybe all of us?) seem to be hardwired to want. If I have been clever enough in my life to see that the money, sex, and power that many chase after are really means to this end and not ends in themselves, that hasn't helped much if I reach for the end without any means to achieve it. And I'm afraid I've made God, or at least religious endeavor, the means. Whenever God is the means rather than the end, idolatry is present.
True as that may be, it is a bit of a false trail for today's meditation. I am hardwired to desire a rewarding life, and I believe also hardwired to find it in relationship with God. It is not, after all, idolatry to desire it, since He himself has given me the desire and He reveals the path to fulfilling it. The path is revealed in Psalm 1 as meditating on the law of I AM as a way of connecting to Him and getting in sync with Him, and rejecting the walking, standing, and sitting according to all the ways we try to substitute our own inner rules and urges for His. The rewarding life I want is on offer, and He has provided the means.
Giving myself permission to "just be" has in it an echo of "I AM," not that I can become self-sufficient as He is but that my being is to be connected to His Being (and is not all about my doing). Giving myself permission to just be is an obedience to the first verse of Psalm 1. It forgoes the walking in bad counsel, standing in bad paths, and sitting with a bad attitude that marks the unrighteous. In verse 2, it is the connection to I AM, and not all my doing, that leads to the rewarding life.
What follows is Psalm 1, consciously not word-for-word but closely paraphrased from my memorization of the ESV, as shaped by the commentary mentioned above:
- How rewarding is the life of the man (or woman) who does not walk according to the counsel of the ungodly, or stand in the paths that sinners take, or sit and mock,
- But who delights in the law of I AM. He meditates on His law day and night.
- He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which brings forth its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. Everything he does [has a fruit-from-the-root quality that] causes itself to prosper.
- Not so the wicked, who are like the chaff that the wind blows away.
- Therefore the wicked will not stand on the day of judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
- For I AM knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will end in destruction.
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