Copyright © 2005-2007 Collin Park
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.Notes for reading of December 20
Today's reading includes Psalm 139, which remindes me about God's presence. Not just "God with us" but "God with me" in particular:
O Lord, you have searched me
and you know me
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
Psalm 139.1-2
It goes on like that, the psalmist praying and taking great comfort that God knows him and is always with him. There's even a recent song - a "praise song" I guess - based on this psalm.
Based on the nice parts, that is. Here's a part that the modern songwriters skipped:
If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord,
and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
Psalm 139.19,21,22
What do you make of that? That's not the kind of language we expect to hear in church these days, and in fact we usually don't. Scare away the visitors, that would.
But David didn't seem to mind saying those things. He knows that God knows his heart; why try to hide anything?
And so with us. Or so it should be, at least in private. But how many of us tell God what we really feel? How often do we censor our feelings and thoughts from God, or even from ourselves?
As a friend once told me, "Anger won't be denied." It will leak out in my words, my attitudes, my actions; it'll be displaced. It might leak out slowly; it might come out all at once in an explosion over some apparently trivial thing. Better to acknowledge what God already knows is there.
May God search our hearts today and give us the grace and courage to admit what's really there, that we can follow him in truth.
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Today's Old Testament reading is as timely today as it was some 2500 years ago when the prophet Haggai proclaimed it:
Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways.You have planted much, but have harvested little. [...] You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.
from Haggai 1:5-6
Do you ever feel like that? I certainly do. We get to the end of the month and I wonder how we managed to spend everything. It's a good thing we have payroll deductions, or we probably wouldn't be saving or giving much.
So what is Haggai talking about? Is his advice -- or rather, the advice that the Lord spoke through Haggai -- relevant to us today? Judge for yourself.
You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?" declares the Lord Almighty. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.
Haggai 1:9
Apparently, these people were neglecting the Lord's temple, and as a result he cut their agricultural productivity. So that's one reason that money seems to disappear -- when we neglect the things of God.
Of course that's not the whole story; even those who give generously sometimes feel like money seems to just disappear. One reason is suggested by something my friend Alex says (by the way I hesitate to say "financial difficulties" because of this). A pastor at his old church used to tell people:
You say you have financial troubles? Visit the Philippines; there you will see people trying to survive on what they find in the trash dump. After that I'm not sure you will still say you have financial problems.
Some of us (myself included) have very high expectations for material prosperity. Would it be too harsh to say that our perspective is a little out of kilter considering the crushing poverty that most of the world lives in?
One more thing occurs to me, and that's the power of false gods in our lives. If money just seems to disappear, and especially if I feel anxious about having enough, this could be a sign that money has too much power in my life -- that it's a false god, or an idol, in my life.
And if that's the case, I know of only one way to break its power: to repudiate it by acting in faith. Of course we have to pray, too, but the thing to do is to give some away. By giving money away (even if I also get a tax deduction), I declare that I have more than I need (which is certainly true). I exercise power over money and thereby show that money does not have power over me. I topple the idol and turn in faith to God, from whom all blessings actually flow.
This isn't a mystical "give to God and he will give back to you" -- it's more like "act with a right perspective on money, and some sanity will return to you." Which even an unbelieving psychologist will acknowledge is true.
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