Self-Bound, yet Free

“But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness…Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me” (Ps. 69:13, 16, ESV).

The psalmist’s conviction of the fact that God will answer his prayer is based on God’s steadfast love—hesed. God’s hesed carries a lot of meanings, such as kindness, mercy, loyalty, faithfulness, duty, and obligation. It is always understood in the context of covenant in which God’s hesed is graciously revealed and experienced. On the one hand, God is free to act. On the other hand, he is bound himself within this relationship.[1] Paradoxically, the sovereign God is limited by His hesed towards Israel as well as to us in Christ.

The psalmist’s prayer is grounded in God’s hesed. His confidence is placed in God himself, not in his personal piety. His religious zeal does not guarantee that his prayer gets answered and that God will act in his timetable. Rather, at an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your hesed, answer me in your saving faithfulness. The psalmist acknowledges God’s sovereign will and trusts God’s self-bound, yet free hesed.

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[1] Robin Routledge, Old Testament Theology: A Thematic Approach (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008), pp. 108-110.

In Waiting, I Wait

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry” (Ps. 40:1, ESV).

David inclined upward to the Lord in prayer; God inclined downward to David in listening.  The phrase “He inclined to me” means that the Lord bent down to pay attention to David. God accommodated Himself in order to hear a mortal human like David. Such an inclination tells us something about the nature of God: He is always towards us and more than willing to relate to us. David understood his God in a relational and covenantal way. David knew that the God whom he believed was the God of covenant, not a Greek god, who is only up there without getting involved with human affairs.

The God of covenant got involved with Israel, made a covenant with Israel, and promised to dwell among Israel: “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God” (Exod. 29:45-46, ESV).

For David, his present context was a context of trial. He could only wait. Not only did he wait, but also waited patiently. John Calvin translated it as “In waiting, I waited.” In the Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Calvin noted:

He tells us, not merely that he had waited, but by the repetition of the same expression, he shows that he had been a long time in anxious suspense. In proportion then as his trial was prolonged, the evidence and proof of his faith in enduring the delay with calmness and equanimity of mind was so much the more apparent. The meaning in short is, that although God delayed his help, yet the heart of David did not faint, or grow weary from delay; but that after he had given, as it were, sufficient proof of his patience, he was at length heard.[1]

As one theologian said, “God may delay, but He is never too late.” In waiting, David waited again and again because he believed that God would never be too late to rescue him. God’s “delay” was His loving concern for David. It was in His delay David learned the lesson of waiting. In waiting, God created a space for David to meditate upon his faith. David reflected and prayed, “Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart’” (Ps. 40:6-8, ESV). In God’s “delay”, David had a space to distinguish true religion from false religion. How easy it is to use sacrifice and offering to substitute for doing His will with gladness.  

David grew toward maturity in God’s likeness in God’s gracious “delay.”

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[1] John Calvin, Psalms 36-92. Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. V. 500^th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), pp. 89-90.

Daily Inclination

“Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!” (Ps. 119:36, ESV)

By nature, our hearts are inclined away from his laws and decrees. The sinful effects of the original sin are stamped within us. “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:19a, ESV). The doctrine of the original sin still affects us. We always fall for what we want to do and fail to do what we ought to do. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19, ESV). To reflect on the dilemma between “want to” and “ought to”, John Piper notes, “The biblical doctrine of original sin boils down to this (to borrow from St. Augustine): We are free to do what we like, but we are not free to like what we ought to like.”[1]

The psalmist prays for the inclination of his heart towards God’s laws, statutes, and decrees, for they mirror the face of God. Whenever the heart of the psalmist is inclined to God’s laws, the face of God is drawn near.

Each day we ought to pray for our inclination so that we can think and do what we ought to. Our inclination towards Scripture ought to be our starting point in daily worship.

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[1] John Piper, Taste and See: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2005), p. 42.

Return and Rest

“Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you” (Ps. 116:7, ESV).

The psalmist exhorted himself to return. Returning is a recurrent theme in the Psalms. It’s a holy yearning to get back to the center of life. Getting lost in one’s life is a recurrent reality. It’s necessary to know that we are lost and realize that we need to get back. The psalmist spoke to himself, saying “Return, O my soul, to you rest.” Resting is the means to the end. The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel says, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15a, ESV). We don’t get saved in resting, quietness, and trust. We encounter the peace of God and enter into the presence of God through resting, quietness, and trust: the means to the end. It requires obedience and wisdom to get back to the means because not everyone sees the need to get back to the means. God says, “But you were unwilling” (Isa. 30:15b, ESV).

The reason to get back to the means is in the second half of the verse: “for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.” For is the ground for the psalmist’s returning. He has tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord throughout his life. Such goodness is bountiful. There is no lacking in His holy goodness towards us. Each morning, each day, each night, when we learn to get back to the means of returning, quietness, and trust, we are silently declaring His bounteousness in life. When we are able to declare His bounteousness in action quietly and silently, we start to return and enter into rest in and through which we begin to understand and view our life (daily) concerns differently.

A Theological Crisis

In quietness, the psalmist allowed himself to make a diligent search (Ps. 77:6). When he started to search within himself honestly, the Spirit of God encountered his spirit. He asked a few questions in his spiritual search:

Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love forever ceased?

Are his promises at and end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger shut up his compassion? (77: 7-9, ESV)

In the day of trouble, the psalmist questioned his belief. More specifically, he doubted his God. This is a theological crisis for the psalmist. His faith did not jump from quietness (77:6) to conviction—“Then I said, ‘I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.’” (77:10) Rather, from doubt to solid faith, he welcomed such a crisis by questioning what he truly believed and scrutinizing his own theological conviction. God is still God after being “investigated.” As Augustine said, “God longs to be longed after.” In this sense, I believe that God is ok with our rebellious search because God knows that we are in the journey: The Promised Land is ahead of the wilderness. With his promise “search and we will find,” we will move from disorder (doubt) to order (faith).

The psalmist confronted himself with these questions about God. He always articulated his faith in this language (e.g. his promises, his grace, compassion, etc…). How much did he truly believe and embrace? It’s necessary to revisit our religious jargons. We use it so often that we don’t usually mean it most of the time. We use it as if it were part of our system. We may be surprised how much we don’t believe and embrace when we search. But the good news is that when we start to search, we get to know God from where we actually are. We don’t start with where we think we are. God only meets us in reality. The doctrine of the incarnation confirms it.

The Intimate Stranger

Psalm 77:5-6—“I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, ‘Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart.’ Then my spirit made a diligent search:”

Either in national tragedy or personal disaster, the psalmist pondered what was going on and meditated contemplatively. It was at night. He couldn’t sleep. This Psalm paints a picture of solitude and silence. In the midst of it, we see the struggle of the psalmist. He struggled with God—“In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord…my soul refuses to be comforted” (77:1-2). He also struggled with the inner person—“Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search” (77:6b).

Lauren F. Winner, assistant professor of Christian Spirituality at Duke Divinity School, wrote a book review on Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr (Jossey-Bass, 2011) in Christian Century (Vol. 128, No. 17, August 23, 2011).

An excerpt:

Rohr’s framework leans heavily on Carl Jung. The spiritual life has two stages. In the first half of life, you are devoted to establishing yourself; you focus on making a career and on finding friends and a partner; you are crafting your identity. Spiritually, people in the first half of life are often drawn to order, to religious routine. We are developing habits and letting ourselves be shaped by the norms and practices of our family and community.

Then—a crisis. “Some kind of falling,” Rohr says, is necessary for continued spiritual development. “Normally a job, fortune, or reputation has to be lost,” writes Rohr, “a death has to be suffered, a house has to be flooded, or a disease has to be endured.” The crisis can be devastating. The crisis undoes you. The flood doesn’t just flood your house—it washes out your spiritual life. What you thought you knew about living the spiritual life no longer suffices for the life you are living.

Rohr does not offer a syrupy evasion of this crisis. But he does underline two crucial points. First, God has not abandoned you, even if you are sure that God has…Second, “We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.” That may be cold comfort during the crisis—when your house has flooded, who wants to think about spiritual growth? But later you will notice. You will wonder how you possibly could have come to where you are without that flood.

As Rohr notes, it is written into the very life of Christ, how descended to the dead before he could be resurrected and ascent into heaven. The falling will happen—there is no way to avoid it. But the growth, the second half of life, doesn’t necessarily happen. You can stay stuck if you wish. You can refuse the second half.

If you welcome the second half of life, this is what you will find: you learn to hear “a deeper voice of God” than you heard before. “It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of ‘common sense,’ of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self.” You can hear this voice in the second half of life precisely because of all the work you did in the first half; your very self is now a container strong enough to hold the call of the intimate stranger.” (p. 39)

In the second of life, the psalmist learned to hear “the call of the intimate stranger” at night.

Lived Theology

Today I was reading the Book of Psalms on the train. This book is about prayer. I learn to pray with this book. Psalmists prayed to God, and their prayers became part of the canon. Their prayers became the Word of God. Their cries, soul-longings, and prayers became the inspiration of others, like us, through the illumination of the Spirit. The way they articulated their inner voices and struggles helps us articulate ours. We don’t always have to find a new way to articulate our faith. Rather, we can go back to the ancient ways through which all these sinners and saints prayed to God in their time and space. “The Psalms mirror the human soul. We look into them, and we see ourselves.”[1] The language of the Psalms is the language of human souls.

The Book of Psalms is not primarily concerned about theology. It’s about doxology in specific time and space. Or I should say that the Book of Psalms is not so much concerned about sound orthodoxy and proper theology. It’s concerned about lived theology. All these sinners and saints tried to seek God in their contexts. They didn’t try to say everything right. They didn’t try to protect their faith from being adulterated. They just sought a better approach to live out their faith and encounter their God in their time and space. They didn’t want to be minimized by their surroundings. Rather, they wanted to magnify their God. They attempted to maximize their trust and faith in God through their cries and prayers.

In other words, the psalmists sought God’s presence in their lives. They put doxology into living. Their lived theology is not about being right. It’s about praise and thanksgiving, struggle and prayer, and waiting and living.  Their lived theology allowed them to embrace failure and confusion. Otherwise, it’s not lived theology, but theology in a vacuum.

“Abstract theology is not found in the Bible. The whole Bible dresses truth about God in the context of our relationship with him...The Psalms give us theology written in intimate relationship with God and in close touch with life.”[2]

Whenever theology is apart from a particular space and time, it’s clean and secure. But it’s not Christian theology, for Christian theology is grounded in the incarnation of the Son whose birth, ministry, death, and resurrection happened in particular time and space. His birth place was messy in the manger. His ministry was filled with sorrow and rejection (Isa. 53:3). He embraced the hatred of others and the violent death with open hands. The resurrection of the body emptied the tomb that was blocked by a big stone. Christ contextualized the gospel as the first-century Good News. And the Holy Spirit has helped God’s people to contextualize and re-contextualize this first-century gospel into our own.

When we read the Psalms, we learn to hear our voices and embrace our own failure and confusion. In Psalm 119, it’s the longest psalm in the Psalms. In this psalm, the psalmist craved for God’s laws.

“I will study you’re your commandments and reflect on your ways” (119:15).

“I will delight in your principles and not forget your word” (119:16).

“Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your law” (119:18).

In some verses, we see that the psalmist didn’t love God’s laws and pray the prayer in a vacuum. It all happened in a hostile environment. He prayed in a certain way because of his surroundings—local people and local events.

“Though the wicked hide along the way to kill me, I will quietly keep my mind on your decrees” (119:95).

“My life constantly hangs in the balance, but I will not stop obeying your law” (119:109).

“Rescue me from the oppression of evil people; then I can obey your commandments” (119:134).

At the end of the psalm, this is how he ended:

“I have wandered away like a lost sheep; come and find me, for I have not forgotten your commands” (119:176).

The psalmist was lost—totally lost. He couldn’t even find a way in life. That’s why he prayed, “Come and find me.” The reason why he prayed “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path” (119:105) is because he was lost, and he knew that the Torah was his road map in the midst of lostness. He prayed this prayer not in a vacuum, but in a particular time and space—his lost time and lost space. He confessed that he was lost. He prayed for God’s seeking. This was his condition; it may be our condition as well.

“The Psalms were born from life struggles, and they speak to people who struggle today. They also arose from people who had experienced liberation from struggle, and so we find expression to our joy when God liberates us from oppression.”[3]

“And I, the Son of Man, have come to seek and save those like him who are lost,” said Jesus. (Lk. 19:10)

When we read the Psalms, we enter into the Psalmists’ inner voice that will become an inviting voice—we are invited to articulate our feelings and thoughts to God and relate to Him in reality. The Book of Psalms is a record about how to experience God in a way that we can be freed from proper theology and freed for lived theology in which we seek a way to live out our faith with our feet on the ground. This book gives us the language that we need and invites us to use its language to talk to God.

[1] Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, The Cry of The Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1994), p. 32.

[2] Tremper Longman III, How to Read the Psalms (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), p. 53.

[3] Ibid., pp. 84-85.

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