Psalm 62:5-8 – Wait in silence.

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.

selah

The term “selah” is often said to meant as a call to consider, to meditate on what has been written. And that is what I set out to do this week.

This is a Psalm of confident assurance in God and God alone. This is not the desperate reassurance or the reminding tone of last week’s verse not to fear but trust in the Lord. This is a declaration of God’s greatness, and if nothing else, a lesson for us to rest quietly in the power and wonder of God.

God is a refuge for us, not only doing battle on our behalf, but also encasing us in security. Though from our own point of view we are surrounded on every side, we fear evil and the reproach of the unbelieving public, and feel as though our skin has the edge of their spears already poised and ready to pierce, we see not the spiritual reality.

Psalm 62 rectifies the difference between our eyes and God’s eyes. David declares to all who would hear, “Don’t struggle! Don’t seek for vain glory, or trust in money or your strength!” When Isaiah says “all men are like grass”, he mirrors David in verse 9, “Those of low estate are but a breath; those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath.”

This may be one of the biggest perspective switches that have started to breach into my view in the last year. All this, the whole story, the whole song and dance of my time on earth, is not primarily about my relationship with God, though it is an extraordinary and inscrutable thing that he would allow such an exchange. No the story is ALL ABOUT GOD. He is glorious. He is righteous. He is powerful. He ordains and holds ALL THINGS. Not only did he create the universe, but Hebrews 1 tells us :

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

You and I have troubles and trials sufficient to fill our minds and fill every single day. Allow yourself to be quiet for a few moments. Listen for his voice. Forget your own weakness. Tell your soul, for God alone to wait, for your only hope is in him.

Though to us it often feels as though we stand upon a precipice, with God as the rope that ties us off, David encourages us to realize that we stand upon the mighty infallible wall of God’s providence. So if you have worry, or fear, or doubt, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

Amen.

Happiness as the Supreme Value

Life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. That, according to a certain man, is part of what every human being is entitled to. I’ve spent enough time thinking about the first two and so I would like to address the third. The pursuit of happiness. If I can be frank I think we westerners at least are for the most part taken sick with our pursuit of happiness, and like children with bags full of Halloween candy, we have pursued it to its inevitable end. Sickness.

Why I say we are sick of/with happiness is that the thing never lasts, and though every generation struggles its whole life through it can never arrive at a perpetual state of happiness, as it needs to be maintained, fed and ends up being a sort of all consuming monster that we eventually give all ourselves in the pursuit of.

It is elusive, it is fleeting, and completely unsustainable.

But there is a better example. I have found that by “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.(Hebrews 12:2 ESV)” there is a hope that transcends happiness. The terms of happiness and joy have often been used interchangeably and some have assumed they were synonymous, but according to the author of Hebrews, there is a dramatic difference, and it almost seems that joy has almost nothing to do with happiness at all.

While joy often has happiness as a side-effect, focusing on happiness almost always the the thief of our Joy

What Jesus endured on the cross was unimaginable and not fully explainable; on every level of the senses, emotional, physical, spiritual, it was absolute horror. Rejection from friends, family, and God, the worst death the Romans could concoct, and a disconnection from the Creator of the universe. Yet the writer of Hebrews says there was Joy that was set before Jesus in the face of all that he knew was to come. In his allegorical book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis says (paraphrase) that to everyone who leaves the grey city (which is allegorical for hell or purgatory) and comes to walk the difficult path of becoming whole and more solid in heaven, the joy he/she comes into will be so great it is retroactive. The joy that is set before those who grab hold of it will turn all trial, all obstacles, all of the darkest possible horror in a person’s life into joy, as it can be seen so clearly as something that was simply an obstacle or trial on the way to true joy. And there is then joy in the conquering. But to those who do not leave the grey city, even life will be seen as a sort of hell, as it has only served the purpose of bringing them into further hell.

So what is set before us? Is it True Heaven or True Hell? It seems that identical lives could be led and one considered heaven and one considered hell based solely on the end of the journey. My Christian brothers and sisters, we have no choice, in view of what our God has set before us, to see life through the joy of the promise. We cannot dwell in the temporary as if it were an end in itself, but consider all things in view of what is promised. To those who may not believe, there is a sort of retroactive proof of heaven in the joy of redemption. That the joy the Christian can rest in foreshadows the heaven itself is a great mystery, but it is also wondrous and terrible, that both heaven and hell are having their effect on every single person, every single day, for their joy, or their torment.