God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks. Psalm 36:5-6 (TM)

There’s an old song that was sung back in the seventies. I haven’t thought of it in years, but this verse in today’s chapter brought it to mind…here are the words to the best of my recollection:

If I’d been the only one, alone in my despair, still you would have come for me.
If I’d been the only one, thinkin’ no one cared, still you would have come for me.
If I’d been the only one.
Every tear he cried was just for me, the blood he shed was just for me
and as he slowly died on Calvary, I get the feelin’ that he was thinkin’ of me
If I’d been the only one.

It’s amazing to come to the realization that what Christ did on the cross was as personal as it was universal.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and CaroWallis1

Please get up—wake up! Tend to my case. My God, my Lord—my life is on the line. Do what you think is right, God, my God, but don’t make me pay for their good time. Psalm 35:23 (TM)

Psalm 35 is what Bible scholars call an "imprecatory" psalm. That’s a large, important sounding word (which scholars love to use) which means to call down curses on someone. David starts out his song asking God to punch his enemies on the schnoz (that’s a large, important sounding word for what Bible scholars call the nose). He ends up asking God to take up his case.

Some people have issues with imprecatory psalms. It doesn’t sound too godly, asking God to punch your enemies in the schnoz. But, the psalms were David’s gut-level-honest cries to God and David was fully human in his cries. I don’t have a problem with that. The Bible instructs us to let God be the judge. In pleading his case before the Righteous Judge, David was doing exactly what God wants us to do – let Him be Judge.

Like David, I understand what it’s like to be wronged. I know what it’s like to be falsely accused. I can recall being slandered many times by strangers, friends and loved ones. I know the experience of people rolling their eyes and turning their back on me because they believed lies. I know hostile accusation. Perhaps the hardest thing when you’ve been wronged is to be "quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger" (James 1:19)– to choose not to take up your own cause and let God be the Judge.

I can scream and cry and plead my case before God, asking Him to lock up my enemies and throw away the key. I can even, if I want to, scream for the death penalty when someone cuts me off in traffic. The cool thing about letting God be Judge is that, in His omniscience (that’s the large, important sounding word Bible scholars use for "He knows everything"), God knows when to judge in my favor and when to say: "Tom, silly boy, you don’t know everything and you can’t see all the circumstances. I appreciate the rant. I hear you. I love you. Now go sit down, calm down, forgive, let it go, and let me take care of this."

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and pensiero

Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see — how good God is. Blessed are you who run to him. Psalm 34:8 (TM)

Wendy and I often find ourselves in the company of non-believers and those whose concept of God and Christianity are far removed from ours. We find the conversations stimulating, fascinating and challenging. These conversations give definition to what we believe and, hopefully, challenge others perceptions as well. Recently we were listening to some people criticizing what they perceived to be the emotionalism stirred up at church camps. The belief was that Christians brain-wash their children.

Wendy and I were revisiting the conversation the other night. While I will freely admit that I’ve seen more than one church camp manipulate presentations for the emotional effect (much like theatre), I also believe that a relationship with God is just that – a relationship. Relationships are sensory experiences and they produce real emotion. Christianity is not just an intellectual adherence to a set of dusty doctrines penned by monks centuries ago. It’s a living, breathing, tasting, seeing relationship with the Almighty.

In my own relationship with God I’m given to angry rants, gleeful laughter, swelling gratitude, and remorseful tears. My relationship with God is as sensory as it is intellectual.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and jbelluch.

God takes the wind out of Babel pretense, he shoots down the world’s power-schemes.  Psalms 33:10 (TM)

Wendy and I were watching The Naked Archaeologist on the History Channel the other day (for conservative Evangelicals: He’s not REALLY naked on the show – you can watch it!). Not only do I love seeing some of the sites I visited in Israel, but I thought Simcha Jacobovici really approaches the archaeological aspects with an open mind. I may not always agree with him, but I love it when head-bloated, closed-minded academics make arrogant, black-and-white pronouncements about what we KNOW could NOT have happened. He’s often quick to point out that we really DON’T KNOW that it didn’t just happen the way the Bible says.

Some days that God must just laugh at us and what we think we know.

God takes the wind out of Babel pretense, he shoots down the world’s power-schemes.  Psalms 33:10 (TM)

Wendy and I were watching The Naked Archaeologist on the History Channel the other day (for conservative Evangelicals: He’s not REALLY naked on the show – you can watch it!). Not only do I love seeing some of the sites I visited in Israel, but I thought Simcha Jacobovici really approaches the archaeological aspects with an open mind. I may not always agree with him, but I love it when head-bloated, closed-minded academics make arrogant, black-and-white pronouncements about what we KNOW could NOT have happened. He’s often quick to point out that we really DON’T KNOW that it didn’t just happen the way the Bible says.

Some days that God must just laugh at us and what we think we know.

When I kept it all inside, my bones turned to powder, my words became daylong groans. The pressure never let up; all the juices of my life dried up. Then I let it all out; I said, "I’ll make a clean breast of my failures to God." Suddenly the pressure was gone— my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared.  Psalm 32:3-5 (TM)

I’ve always thought that we Protestants threw some babies out with the bathwater when Martin Luther nailed his grievances with the Catholic church on the Wittenburg door back in 1517. One of them is confession. Sure, I don’t think I need a human priest to absolve us (David took his sin right to God, and look at the result) – but I do think that we need confession. It is good for the soul.

Perhaps that’s why there are sites springing up for people to confess and share their secrets.

I’m blessed with friends and loved ones with whom I can admit my failures, and I know from them I will receive forgiveness and grace. I also have God’s promise that when I confess my sin, He is faithful and just and will forgive my sin and "purify me from all unrighteousness."

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and Jovike