Finally back! The prolonged interlude is at last concluded so I hope to write more this summer and next year on relay too. Through the turbulence of exams and results, job applications and job offers we have slipped unwittingly and gloriously in to summer. It is hard to describe just what a slice of paradise Magdalen green is in the summer, the warmth, the view, the sun, Dundee’s west end  in all its leafy splendour. I walked down to riverside Tesco and back which, far from being its regular chore was, in this weather, a delight. I was listening to ‘the explicit gospel’ by Matt chandler, the combination of the revitalising sun and theology, a pleasure.  Absorbing both the vitamin D and the word my mind wandered from these wonders on to something I read in my day to day bible study about a week ago, Psalm 116.

¹ I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
² Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.

³ The cords of death entangled me,
the anguish of the grave came over me;
I was overcome by distress and sorrow.
⁴ Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!”

God, in his mercy to us, hears us when we call for help. Here the cry to the lord is the fear of death, the pain and distress of life at its darkest; this however is far from my recent experiences. By the grace of God I am currently in a simple time of life, far from darkest and thankfully running low on distress and sorrow. The temptation for all of us I feel is that realistically we spend much of our life in these normal good times where not all that much is going wrong and things are just ticking over, and thus we find God’s grace and mercy to us somewhat inconsequential for everyday living. And there lies a huge problem; our reverence for God can be almost directly subject with our perceived need for him. The man in distress says ‘Lord help me!’; the same man a week later when he is no longer in such deep need forgets God altogether.  Forgive the slight flippancy of this remark but I think we have a terrible tendency to treat God as a disaster sponge, to absorb all our problems when we have them dealt with and the rest of the time for him to stand at the sidelines of our life and cheer us on.  Sidelining God is about as useful as sailing whilst completely ignoring the wind and still believing we can make headway.

So then what? Do we try create drama so that we always need to involve God, clearly not, what we really need is a change of heart and mind. The first thing in this psalm is ‘I love the Lord… I will call on him as long as I live’ this is not treating God as the great fixer in the sky but as the fulfilment of our daily need, and the one who, because of his constant grace and mercy to us, we love. Neither bland nor half hearted, one sided nor forced, this is a love for the one who provides for us all we have and cares for us, loving  us more than we can know. Why do we love God? Because he first loved us. And so the psalm continues…

⁵ The Lord is gracious and righteous;
our God is full of compassion.
⁶ The Lord protects the unwary;
when I was brought low, he saved me.

⁷ Return to your rest, my soul,
for the Lord has been good to you.

There are some wonderful truths about God expressed here, his grace and compassion but also his righteousness.  I’m sure we can understand why his grace and compassion are important to us, but why should it matter to us that our God is righteous? Two reasons, first that only a righteous God is worth following, why would we follow a God who was not righteous and just? Secondly because through Christ we are offered his righteousness, though we have no righteousness of our own we are offered to take part in God’s righteousness and thus be justified by him and able to come before him; without his righteousness how could we stand? How could a just God have unjust people in his kingdom? How could completely fallen people come before his holiness and live? Only by the gracious gift of his own righteousness to us: only by his grace.

He ’protects the unwary’ and the writer says when he ’was brought low’ God saved him. There is a loving God worth worshiping, helping those who can’t help themselves, and protecting us from ourselves; we think we know what we need, we are wrong, and that’s why we need God.  And this enables the writer to give this excellent verse, ‘return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you’ that this gift of grace from our God should bring us deep joy and an assured hope. Rest, this is not an unsure wavering false belief, this is rest in light of seeing the wonderful things God has done for us. A call to relax, not to worry about our lives which can become a complete distraction from the goodness of God but to ponder upon his love and grace and live to his glory.

⁸ For you, Lord, have delivered me from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling,
⁹ that I may walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.

¹⁰ I trusted in the Lord when I said,
“I am greatly afflicted”;
¹¹ in my alarm I said,
“Everyone is a liar.”

¹² What shall I return to the Lord
for all his goodness to me?

¹³ I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁴ I will fulfil my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.

The writer lists what God has done for him, the troubles of his life and how God has intervened. At each turn of his life God has listened to his prayers, taken away his sorrow, kept him from falling, saved him from death, and provided for his needs. So he asks how he should act to repay God for his goodness to him, and the answer? To devote himself to God. To lift up the cup of salvation, to tell others of how God has saved him and why he worships, to help people to understand God in his goodness to them. He also promises to revere God, to act according to his law, and this is the way in which he worships. We are called to worship God, this psalm gives reason upon reason why we should, but is this just by worshiping in church? Of course not, we are called to revere God in all things at all times, glorifying him in whatever we do, as Ecclesiastes says ‘eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God’. God has given us worship as a gift, he is holy and does not benefit from our worship but he requires it because it is good for us to worship our Lord and not ourselves, and we can do all things (except of course, sinning) to the glory of God.  This brings us to some well known words of great joy  – ‘What is the chief end of man? To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever ’ and enjoy him forever we shall!

¹⁵ Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his faithful servants.
¹⁶ Truly I am your servant, Lord;
I serve you just as my mother did;
you have freed me from my chains.

¹⁷ I will sacrifice a thank offering to you
and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁸ I will fulfil my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people,
¹⁹ in the courts of the house of the Lord—
in your midst, Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord.

We are proclaimed free, to love a God who loves us more than we could understand even though we are more sinful that we can ever admit. In light of the magnificent sun I shall choose to praise the even more magnificent son of God, and thank God for his wonderful grace to us at all times.

This was a joy to write, I hope to write more and thus cover different issues and maybe in more depth but sometimes we only have to skim the surface of the divine to come off shining.