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We know that the spiritual atmosphere in which we live erodes faith, dissipates hope and corrupts love, but it is hard to put our finger on what is wrong.
There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.
They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points.
It is this “long obedience in the same direction” which the mood of the world does so much to discourage.
A disciple is a learner, but not in the academic setting of a school-room, rather at the work site of a craftsman. We do not acquire information about God but skills in faith. Pilgrim (parepidēmos) tells us we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ.
But the ascent was not only literal, it was also a metaphor: the trip to Jerusalem acted out a life lived upward toward God, an existence that advanced from one level to another in developing maturity—what Paul described as “the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus” (Phil 3:14).
The Hebrews were a people whose salvation had been accomplished in the exodus, whose identity had been defined at Sinai and whose preservation had been assured in the forty years of wilderness wandering.
They were a redeemed people, a commanded people, a blessed people.
“They are not monuments, but footprints. A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while
footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’”9
a journey to God that becomes a life of peace.
We have been told the lie ever since we can remember: human beings are basically nice and good. Everyone is born equal and innocent and self-sufficient. The world is a pleasant, harmless place. We are born free. If we are in chains now, it is someone’s fault, and we can correct it with just a little more intelligence or effort or time.
Rescue me from the person who tells me of life and omits Christ, who is wise in the ways of the world and ignores the movement of the Spirit.
truth
truth
John Baillie wrote, “I am sure that the bit of the road that most requires to be illuminated is the point where it forks.”1 The psalmist’s God is a lightning flash illuminating just such a crossroads.
repentance.
It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts.
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Any hurt is worth it that puts us on the path of peace, setting us free for the pursuit, in Christ, of eternal life.
a way that begins in repentance, or turning to God.
world-rejection,
The truth of God explained their lives, the grace of God fulfilled their lives, the forgiveness of God renewed their lives, the love of God blessed their lives.
Repentance, the first word in Christian immigration, sets us on the way to traveling in the light. It is a rejection that is also an acceptance, a leaving that develops into an arriving, a no to the world that is a yes to God.
Psalm 121 is a quiet voice gently and kindly telling us that we are, perhaps, wrong in the way we are going about the Christian life, and then, very simply, showing us the right way.
We take precautions by learning safety rules, fastening our seatbelts and taking out insurance policies. But we cannot guarantee security.
mountains?
Palestine was overrun with popular pagan worship. Much of this religion was practiced on hilltops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees were planted, sacred prostitutes both male and female were provided; persons were lured to the shrines to engage in acts of worship that would enhance the fertility of the land, would make you feel good, would protect you from evil.
“Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains” (Jer 3:23 RSV).
Help comes from the Creator, not from the creation. The Creator is always awake: he will never doze or sleep.
It is to name and to describe God who preserves, accompanies and rules us.
The great danger of Christian discipleship is that we should have two religions:
The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will guard us from every evil, he guards our very life.
There is something morally repulsive about modern activistic theories which deny contemplation and recognize nothing but struggle. For them not a single moment has value in itself, but is only a means for what follows.
Psalm 120 is the psalm of repentance—the
Psalm 121 is the psalm of trust—a
Psalm 122 is the psalm of worship—a demonstration of what people of faith everywhere and always do: gather to an assigned place and worship their God.
An excellent way to test people’s values is to observe what we do when we don’t have to do anything,
The psalm singles out three items: worship gives us a workable structure for life; worship nurtures
our need to be in relationship with God; worship centers our attention on the decisions of God.
In Jerusalem everything that God said was remembered and celebrated. When you went to Jerusalem, you encountered the great foundational realities: God created you, God redeemed you, God provided for you.
God made us, redeems us, provides for us. The natural, honest, healthy, logical response to that is praise to God. When we praise we are functioning at the center, we are in touch with the basic, core reality of our being.
We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting.
Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.
When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relatio...
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Judgment is not a word about things, describing them; it is a word that does things, putting love in motion, applying mercy, nullifying wrong, ordering goodness.
worship is the
place where our attention is centered on these personal and decisive words of God.
Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God—it whets our appetite. Our need for God is not taken care of by engaging in worship—it deepens.
Shalom, “peace,”
It gathers all aspects of wholeness that result from God’s will being completed in us. It is the work of God that, when complete, releases streams of living water in us and pulsates with eternal life. Every time Jesus healed, forgave or called someone, we have a demonstration of shalom.
