Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
June 15, 2022
Invitatory
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in you sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.
Reading: Psalm 119:97-106
Oh, how I love your law! *
all the day long it is in my mind.
Your commandment has made me wiser than my enemies, *
and it is always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers, *
for your decrees are my study.
I am wiser than the elders, *
because I observe your commandments.
I restrain my feet from every evil way, *
that I may keep your word.
I do not shrink from your judgments, *
because you yourself have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste! *
they are sweeter than honey to my mouth.
Through your commandments I gain understanding; *
therefore I hate every lying way.
Your word is a lantern to my feet *
and a light upon my path.
I have sworn and am determined *
to keep your righteous judgments.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
It’s hard to imagine that we aren’t the masters of our own lives – at least in this essential way, that our lives are our own construal, what we do and what we pursue and whatever possibilities lie before us. Before all else – we presume that we are autonomous. This is our deep trust and conviction. It is simply taken to be our most fundamental right: we are free (or ought to be free) to make of ourselves who we ourselves want to be. And this is the root from out of which all true happiness grows: there is no greater good than for me to be me. And insofar as this is obstructed, we are oppressed, unjustly.
Listen to the voices of dissent, agitating on behalf of all sorts of issues. This is their contention. Listen to the many gurus of advancement and prosperity, they’ll provide foolproof methods by which you will be able to claim yourself for yourself.
How immensely out of step, then, is this portion of Psalm 119. Commandments are the very antithesis of autonomy. Someone else’s desires, someone else’s vision, someone else’s voice is given precedence. And we are expected to follow and obey. Is this even imaginable anymore in any significant way? So often what we really want from church, or want to hear in the Scriptures read during services, or want the preacher to proclaim is a confirmation of what we already believe for ourselves. We want to be affirmed, which takes the form of others acknowledging who we have, on our own, decided to be. But this is not the gist of the psalm.
The 9 verses above are a fair approximation of the entire psalm. They express all the themes contained in the whole. Quite famously, or notoriously, however, Psalm 119 has 176 verses. Multiply the text above almost 20 times. This leads to a great deal of repetition. But the repetition is key to the psalm. For the psalmist tries from almost every available angle to persuade the reader that we are not our own and that this is a great consolation and source of hope. There is something more fundamental than ourselves, something abiding and dependable and good. It is something so intrinsic that it requires the hard work of rubbing away the many layers of our false confidences in ourselves.
“Through your commandments I gain understanding; therefore I hate every lying way.” This is the nature of true freedom. How immensely refreshing it would be to be free from the pandemic of deception that we’ve come to accept, when almost every statement is turned to whatever will be self-serving – and everything that’s not is simply fake news. Imagine that. The most immediate and profound effect of commandments is that they release us from our own natural narcissism. Another voice shines a clearer light on what constitutes our livelihood. The psalmist never tells us exactly what this light is: law, decrees, commandments, word. These are all left ambiguous. But that’s as it should be if the voice is not our own. For the task, then, is never to stop listening – even after 176 verses.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
