Dimly Lit

I’ve signed up for the Twitter feed of the ESV’s verse of the day. It’s nice to see it pop up on my screen at work and, for at least a moment refocuses my attention on Christ.

Today, the verse has stuck with me and banged around inside my head and heart. The verse for today is Psalm 32:8 -

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

What the heck does that mean? That’s what I want so desperately, instruction on the way I should go, but…what does it really look like?

So I pulled up the entire Psalm - it’s fairly short so I’m just going to put the whole thing here:

32:1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up [2] as by the heat of summer. Selah

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly
offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
they shall not reach him.
7 You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah

8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.

10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

A very cursory reading of this seems to indicate that the speaker changes between verses 7 and 8. For the first 7 verses the speaker is acknowledging his sin and his need for forgiveness and redemption. He exhorts his fellow man to do the same and offer prayers to God that they might be surrounded with ’shouts of deliverance’.

Then, at least it seems to me, the tone changes. Now the speaker is offering instruction and counsel. This, to me seems like it is God’s response saying ‘Look, I can forgive you and I am a hiding place, but let’s not stop there. Listen to me, do not be stubborn like horse or a mule, but follow where I lead.’

So with all of that, my question is the same it has been for years and years. How do we know when it is God that seems to be leading us in the way we should go as opposed to my own selfish, egotistical will that is trying to make itself sound like God?

I struggle with the idea of ‘calling’ as related to a career. Does God ‘call’ certain people to certain careers? Is being instructed and taught in the way we should go at least partly referring to what we should do to make a living in the day to day of this life? Or is it referring following Jesus with all of our heart, mind and strength no matter how we earn a living? How specific is God’s instruction?

I know I certainly feel more like the mule without understanding who is being dragged along with my haunches dug in. I want to understand. I want to be glad in the Lord and rejoice. I want to believe, Lord help my unbelief.

The Journey church, which is just down the road from me, has gotten a nice write up in the New York Times of all places! I’ve heard lot’s of very good things about Darrin Patrick and all that he’s doing over there, so kudos to him and all the folks at The Journey for the nice article.

My toddler has a board book based loosely on Ecclesiastes 3, “A Time for Everything“. One page says that there is a time to be quiet, while the next page states; “and a time to be very, very NOISY!” I couldn’t help but think of this as I read Al Hsu’s post, Deliver Us from Me-Ville on quiet time and loud time. Yes, it is a good example of my current intellectual level that reading smart, engaging blog posts immediately brings to mind a toddler’s board book!

On the other hand, Hsu is talking about what sounds like a very good book called Deliver Us from Me-Ville by David Zimmerman. Some day, after I’ve caught up on all of my board books (I’m so far behind), I will need to check this one out. One of the things that catches Hsu’s attention is the line:

By privileging solitude - ‘quiet time’ - over fellowship as a means of
identifying God at work, we privilege our own instincts over the
instincts of others.

Wow. That’s really good. While personal, individual time with God is certainly good, even necessary (see Exhibit A - Jesus), the danger is that it tends to focus our relationship with God only on ourselves. We become individualistic Christians and our faith runs the risk of becoming a subjective experience that seeks to, as Hsu puts it, “benefit our own preconceived ideas.”

As an avowed extrovert, it is good to be reminded occasionally that it is possible to find God in community as well as alone. I tend to look toward some mystic and monastic types and think that if only I could have a contemplative life like that, I would really be able to know God. I forget Bonhoeffer’s warning:

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

and T.S. Eliots:

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

There is indeed a time to be quiet as well as a time to be very, very noisy. Both are valuable, and both can be in praise of and in relationship with God.

Dr. Al Mohler has a very interesting post regarding the disturbing trend of college students being unable to focus and pay attention during class because of all the opportunities for digital distraction. Hes’ writing about an article found in The American Prospect which highlights the return of a 2003 graduate to one of his classes where he observes a large number of students surfing the internet during the lecture. The entire article is definitely worth a read, but I’d like to call out the letter that this former student wrote to the current students he observed:

I understand that your minds move quickly and we are all impacted by a
fast paced culture, but do you realize the horror of shopping online
while Dalton describes…mothers throwing their children into a well to
avoid a barrage of bullets? What are you doing? There comes a day when
we must become accountable for our own learning process…Take it on.
This is your life. What is the point of neurotically skipping along the
surface when all the beauty lies below? Please seize the moment and
listen deeply to Dalton’s final lectures. Close the computers. Stop
typing madly and soak in the themes he develops…Learning is an act of
creativity, not mind-numbing, tv watching passive receptivity.

In Dr. Mohler’s post, he follows this with an interesting tie in to our ability to know and be with God.

People who cannot maintain mental attention cannot know the intimacy of
prayer, and God does not maintain a Facebook page. Our ability to focus
attention is not just about the mind, for it is also a reflection of
the soul. Our Christian discipleship demands that we give attention to
our attention.