Tag: deuteronomy

Psalm 119.72
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. 

Near the peak of the late-night ratings battle last December The Tonight Show hosted Jerry Seinfeld. Just prior to the comedy legend’s five minute set, the show had announced that everyone in the audience would receive a television as a prize for attending the taping.

Seinfeld began his set laughing that the audience was so happy about receiving a TV — it is likely everyone had one and absolute that every TV would, one day, end up in the trash. “All things on earth only exist in different stages of becoming garbage,” Seinfeld quipped.

He then challenged the audience to think about the journey nearly every object we buy takes. Most things start 

in a visible place then move to a closet or drawer, and before becoming trash many things make a stop in our garage or storage unit. He joked, “That’s why we have those, so we don’t have to see the huge mistakes that we’ve made.”

If we stop and think about the areas we’ve succeeded — whether money, possessions, accomplishment, or accolade — they almost always let us down. There is a “this is it?” moment when we realize that which we set our hearts upon is really just dust. 

“David had a great deal of gold and silver, far more than any of us have; but yet he thought very little of it in comparison with God’s law,” Charles Spurgeon notes in his commentary Psalm 119. “Many people despise gold and silver because they have not got any. The fox said the grapes were sour because they were beyond his reach. But here is a case, in which a man had as much gold and silver as he could ever want.” 

Success and riches are lovely things — how wonderful is it that God created us to experience them? But David also knew they were insufficient for the greater things God created our hearts to know. 

Seinfeld, in jest, suggests our solution is to become a “thrower-outer.” Adding, “I wish there was a store where I could buy something, pivot and just throw it down the incinerator.”

The Psalmist solution, in earnest, is that we love God more than our prize possessions and accomplishments. For, as Spurgeon concludes, “Riches often take to themselves wings, and fly away; even great wealth may soon be spent and gone; but God’s law never leaves those who love it, nor lets them lose it.”

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 29 (Listen – 4:14)
Psalm 119.49-72 (Listen)

Ancient Word in Modern Life
Part 3 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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Psalm 119.25
My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word! 

In his book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, British economist E.F. Schumacher observes that the modern Western economist “is used to measuring the ‘standard of living’ by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is ‘better off’ than a man who consumes less.”

Schumacher’s work, published during the 1973 oil crisis, reads like a manifesto against industrialism’s “bigger is better” mantra. “Since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”

The hero of the book is Buddhist economics — a term Schumacher coined after studying village-based economics. “The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means.

“[Western] economics considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production — land, labor, and capital — as the means. The former, in short, tries to maximize human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximize consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort.”

Much of what Schumacher offers as a critique of western economics is engaging, if not refreshing. His solution of Buddhist economics is intriguing as well, but he places near-utopian hope in humankind (assuming we can figure out economics). “People who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on worldwide systems of trade.”

The idea of Christians thoughtfully engaging faith in economics is a deeply biblical response to our call to cultivate. That image comes with the assumption that everything in creation, as significant and beautiful as it may be, is dust. Trying to solve humankind’s problems through dust is a smokescreen to hide our true actions of substituting God with ourselves. 

One of the privileges of the Christian life is responding to the glory of God’s word while we drive it deep into our hearts through prayer. This posture reorients our understanding and deepens our calling to engage thoughtfully with economic theory and practice while we simultaneously set our eyes on Christ as the greatest hope of the world.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 28.20-68 (Listen)
Psalm 119.25-48 (Listen)

Ancient Word in Modern Life
Part 2 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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Psalm 119.14-15
In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

“The true source of prayer is not an emotion but an insight,” observes Abraham Joshua Heschel in Man’s Quest for God. Yet our sources for insight often prove inconsistent or even unreliable. Cultures wax and wane, emotions churn, even our personal perspectives evolve. Nothing can eviscerate a prayer life more quickly than locating our sole source for insight inside ourselves.

“It is the insight into the mystery of reality, the sense of the ineffable, that enables us to pray,” says Heschel. So too, the psalmist who composed the longest chapter in scripture, Psalm 119. The overtone of the psalm is the confession of God’s word as the source of vitality, joy, and meaning in life. The undertone is the way meaningful prayer is sparked and fueled by insights found in his transcendent word. 

The remedy for spiritual dryness is prayer saturated with scripture. When we pray the words of scripture they enliven our prayers by allowing God’s word to blossom inside our heart, mind, and soul. In An Exposition on Prayer in the Bible Jim Rosscup identified the psalmist’s record of this experience, verse-by-verse, in Psalm 119.

In regards to our daily experience, God’s words in prayer are, “purifying (verse 9), a treasure (11, 72), joy-inspiring (14), delighting (16), replete with wonderful things (18), counselors (24), enlivening (25), strengthening (28). They are freeing (45, 133), comforting (52), stimulating for melody (54), perfecting (80), life-encompassing (96), sweet dessert (103), light (105), an inheritance (111), and worth waiting for (114). Not only these, but they are protecting (117), provocative of hate toward evil (128), truthful (142), righteous (144), everlasting (160), awe-inspiring (161), peace-promoting (165), and love-kindling (167).”

To experience this first-hand, Rosscup suggest taking one eight-verse section of Psalm 119 and praying through it each day. “God saturates all the psalmist’s thoughts as he prays, and rekindles one’s passion for God just to pray the very verses as one’s own thoughts.”

Prayer
Father we pray for an effervescent prayer life. Bring your peace and joy to us through scripture. Correct us and guide us. Revive us and heal the wounds from which we suffer. Help us reclaim our identity in you each morning. Affirm the work of your spirit in us each evening. We pray this in Jesus name.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 27-28.19 (Listen)
Psalm 119.1-24 (Listen)

Ancient Word in Modern Life
Part 1 of 5, read more on TheParkForum.org

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