texting psalms 107-150

Relentless Psalms. Still 07729056452, still unlimited.

Ps107-108 The city 107v4 sought for v7 dwelling and v36 fruitfulness. It is God who is sovereign over this city 108 v7-8 and God who will v10 lead us (&teach us to be in it, straining the text a little.) The city again, then, where, in dialogue with you especially, God has brought the city to meditate upon frequently this past year. God, presenting strands of hopes and love for London, and a seeking an ever-deepening theology of the city for both out embodied existence to this our home, and to all the ways that that is mirrored and metaphored throughout all our being. Thinking about the bible's garden-to-city narrative in thinking about both psychoanalysis and childlikeness, and in all the ways that we are not commanded to return to the prelapsarian state but build with bricks, so our childlikeness is to be a grownup one..

Ps109 v1 Be not silent, O God of my praise. O 'Artists', we, who for pride praise not and preach not and pray not. Be not proud and be not silent. Pride which leads to silence which leads to death. Bang Bang. .. v4 But I give myself to prayer. Give. Myself. To Prayer.Footnote says: I am prayer. Pray thus, totally, as a way of total being. And totally giving: v24 the self-giving emptying of fasting. Pray desperately hungry prayer .. And of prayers against. We pray against an active reality of a personal evil which would be limitlessly destructive. We pray the discontinuation of systemic and generational sins, brokenesses, distortions, corruptions. A cease and desist to resisting God, a full stop to my entanglements in threads of evil, trains of thought, indulged fears and silences.. Might we be not silent today, oh God, for the good of St Marks and the sake of your name. Come Jesus.

Ps110 It is foreign both in its technicalities v4 and in its sense of God's militant holiness v1,5,6. But so He is, because sin deserves such. .. v3 God reclothes us in holy garments, the being-dressed-by and being-dressed-in-white are themes worth visiting, in-vesting one's imagination there. How it feels and what it means to have God clothe us. .. v3 The womb of the day, where the plans God has for us gestate, designed and intentioned. Oh may God make your day amazing, from its birth of dawn, unto a child's day. And now in pregnant sleep, trust we our enwombing God.

Ps111-112 With Crispin's 'why was Solomon given wealth?' (1Kg3-4) in mind, these wisdom psalms are also those one might turn to for a prosperity theology, but such a reading would be superficial ... Suggesting that (i) the wise man or woman 111v12 112v1 images God as the unfallen Adam & Eve, and (ii) the wise one identifies with their community 112v2 v5 v5, then a syllogistic (i) + (ii) = all those the wise one identifies with become identified with God. Wealth becomes no longer your own, but for all these others connected to you. Tenuous things, but let us be convicted today of our giving and money issues, the praise of these psalms and the wisdom they seek cannot be divorced from our giving away.

Ps113-114 v7 God desires to prosper the poor. We aim to find a true theology of money. In defining myself against prosperity theology I overcompensate and then some: the margin of error is a striving clause, a subtle defence of self-made-ness, which is a conviction oat least as damaging as prosperity theology. V9 Mothers and houses. We image this in mothering, we image this in providing homes for mothers. Recently learning of one who, albeit with the mixed motives of having a reliable, affordable housekeeper, intentionally sought a single mother as live-in house help/nanny. Walking with Gay Friends offers a similar commending of sharing home with those single etc, this is stretching the text a little. .. 114v1-2 In leaving the city, in detaching ourself from powers and securities, slavery and addictions, together we are able to form a sanctuary, a body in which God dwells. This is a recipe for ghettoisation, a Christ-against-the-city theology of rejecting culture. The picture I have (in an imagination affected by images of the cruise disaster) a picture of being on such a sea (v3?), with such a mass of people, and of having a tank of fresh water (v8?) - we serve those shipwrecked not by pouring the fresh water into the sea for them, but by establishing a distinct and conspicuous place on the raft dedicated to giving them fresh water to drink. Maritime and strained analogical apologies.

Ps115-116 v1 Not to me but to Jesus be the Glory. This is right worship, and it is such a joy. v2-3 Takes on a new meaning for the Christian for our God is not just in the heavens but has broken into our totality in bethlehem, wealked and talked. & v8 we become like the object of our worship. This makes sense, over the long run the mind evolves to fit that to which its attention continually dwells upon. If I worship the idols of money sex power or whatever, I will die, these things are not living but dead, I will become unalive, like they, running on v4-7 without sight or speech or feeling. But Jesus, who sees (116v15) and hears (116v1) and whose heart beats fully alive (115v1) – Jesus is the true object of the universe's worship. Jesus, no idol, is the image of the invisible God and the same principle allies – the more we worship Jesus, and dwell with him in heart and mind, we will become more like him, embedding ourselves in his magic miraculous. So in our own 116v8 eyes, v9 limbs, & v10 speech, redemption comes. Sometimes it is v6 that simple.

Ps117-118 117 Brevity, sufficient brevity. Teach me this. Within its two verses we sing who we are, who God is and why we are: loved by a faithful God for the sake of the nations. Ps118 There is an amazing density of potential platitudes here! Please please believe: v2 God is all love all the time, God is all love all the time. v6 God is for us, be fearless, God is for us, be fearless. v7 God is on your side, God is on your side. v8 God is a better refuge, God is a better refuge. v14 God is stronger, sing is broken, God is stronger, sin is broken. v17 It is not death to die, it is not death to die. v23 God is beautiful and in my sight, God is beautiful and in my sight.v24 Hari ini, this is the day, this is the day, with all of its new mercies. v26 Blessed is hard to mistranslate, blessed is hard to mistranslate. v29 God is all love all the time, God is all love all the time.

Ps119 Praying this infectious psalm for a new season of reading scripture. This is not about the-law-and-not-the-heart. Reading the longest psalm for our hearts: when our hearts were far off they were v70 fat and insolent, like Iris Murdoch's 'fat lazy ego' that we are when left to ourselves, and only a God will save us. This text a picture of our salvation and how we play our part, so commands for the heart v2 v10 v58 v145 seek, entreat, cry out to God with your whole heart. Your. Whole. Heart. Not a compartmentalised or token affair. To be transformed into those who play in the mega-miraculous nothing but total surrender will do. Spiritual disciplines for the heart v11 store up God's word there with memory and meditation, v34 v69 teach your heart obedience. And so our hearts are transformed into v7 uprightness, v111 joy, and v161 awe. These attributes saturating this piece, let us be so transformed, pray that God would v32 enlarge our hearts and v36 incline our hearts towards him. In all this these are the few verses that stand out this morning, being enlarged and being inclined obvious verbs of transformation and change. What does it mean for one's heart to be inclined towards God? Aware constantly of more than what is in front of me, listening to the voice that would speak my name in all things. May my heart be metallic as to a divine magnet, or a loaded die towards my first love. So my attention dwells here & not on v37's worthless things. Remake me, God, do it as a graced gift, but teach me to participate, v112 in the active: I am to incline my heart. So inclined, because v136 God first inclined himself to us.

Ps120-121 On mission. 120 is by one far flung. To be far flung is to forego the home-grown comforts of straightforward communication and likemindedness. Go. Go to a land where people disagree with you. Go. Do hard things in hard places. Go speak peace to a war zone. Go to such a place as you will need Ps120's petition daily. .. Ps121 Where does my help come from? Is God my helper, my crampons, my nightwatch, my shelter, my shade, my lifesaver, my keeper, my guard? There are other security providers. Indeed, the market for lifesavers is a competitive one, and a lucrative one. Not a few tube ads want to sell you a face-saving shelter and shade, not a few insurance companies will work through the night to keep your life (and your pound of flesh). So go. Go make disciples. Go where insurers won't cover you. Go where your satnav can't guide you. Go where there's no plan B. Only God. Visibly only God.

Ps122 A prayer for you&I, God please v3 bind us together to image your holy city, it can only be you that keeps us and sustains us. Keep v2 our feet within your gates, your courts, keep us within your will and as we dwell here with you, teach us more of yourself, give us ears, and keep us within these gates with thanksgiving and praise as Ps100v4. Keep us122v5 accountable, v6 peaceful, and v7 secure. Keep us bound together for v8 the sake of our brothers and sisters, and v9 for Jesus' sake.

Ps123 On being inclined, lifting up one's eyes and so turning one's heart a certain way. This is to spend one's life within the gates of heaven, seeking God. Here. Here here here. In each moment lift up your eyes to God, like looking for the one you love in a crowd. & to see God in this everyday way is to experience his authority, as in the metaphors of these verses. Authority, we noted, is second-personal, it is a spoken responding requesting prompting. Renew our minds God, attune us to your authority, even now. & v3 have mercy on us have mercy on us. New mercies, beloved, lucky are we. Hallelujah.

Ps124-125 I spoke a little to contrast freedom-from with freedom-for in Ornament, but this is freedom-by. The difficulty with freedom-by is that it is a freedom unto an indebtedness to one's liberator. Good, only if the one that frees you is Good. Otherwise we leave one snare for another snare, one slavery for another slavery, addiction to addiction, death to death. But. The snare is broken. How to speak this unplatitudinally? .. 125 (v1) 'You are steady.' What a word. Those who speak such over us barely know their kindness. Our steadiness should not be our own. .. These two Psalms contrast with two self myths: the Houdinic myth of self-liberation: escapistism. The unfounded myth of self-support: gyroscopism. When all around is sinking sand, we are testimonies both to him that pulled us out and to his solid ground in which we now have our foundations.

Ps126-127 127 Speaks to real ardent questions made of God, to longings that are deep – for v1 home, for v1 our city, v2 out work, v3 our children... when and how and what and please and oh. But. Being drawn back: unless it is God it will all come to nothing, these will be empty pretences, surely to crumble. Even if you build the house, watch the city, get the job and parent the children, you will do it in vain, unless it is God. So, let's try to leave behind our pride again, surrendering to the God that is God, leaving behind striving, accepting belovedness, and v3 God gives his beloved sleep, God gives his beloved sleep. Jesus, please be the one through whom by whom and for whom we love this city, we build a home, we pursue excellent work and care for children. You are our God, and we trust you for 126's promises in all these, that you meet us in our waiting, that you turn tears to joy, ashes to beauty, anxiety to overflowing life. Restore us, for real, that you overflow into our home, city, work, children.

Ps128 Be fruit full. In your praxis and allegory, flavour and ambition, diet and delight. I want to speak this Psalm as a benediction over many of out friends and to do so without a flinch of prosperity-caution. It is hard not to read vending-machine theology into v1's 'everyone..' and following. However, a corrective might be found in a medititation on 'Blessed..' via Mt5 and via these: the blessedness of family, the blessedness of children, the role of the table.. An apologetic for the blessedness of being fruitful is needed in the now: where families are abandoned, children are aborted and the table is substituted with television. The blessedness of such blessingsis not self-evident for many.

Ps129 I don't pray against an active personal evil very often. This because of two major issues. (1) I have a thing theology of spiritual warfare, which is a less than fully personal understanding of the universe. And (2) because of my own complicity in injustice. Oh pray the swift frustration of unjust ways in my own life.

Ps130-131 Lest we forget, God would have us wait on him, 130v5-6 we wait expectantly and in hope, becoming fit for heaven, as out attentiveness sharpens in accordance with v2 God's attentiveness to us. (And so we find ourselves again where even angels fear to tread.) 131 The pleasure of God's presence, the quieting of out hearts and minds, our safety. God is real, draw near with Faith. Thank you.

Ps132 Blessed remembrance. We the blessed store promises in our scripture memory :: the God of scripture enacts remembrance drawing blessing from his store. We exist in a covenant reality in which memory and promises are crucial. We promise to remember and God remembers his promise. Struggling a little to construct an elegant reciprocal description of our cooperation with God through promises and memory.. Blessed promises: Blessed are those who endure hardship v1, [on God's account] for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst and stay-up-late for righteousness/worship v7, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed is the one who heart is set to go v7 on pilgrimage, they shall go Ps84v5-7 from strength to strength. Remember remember remember.

Ps133 v1 'Behold' – be beheld in your dwelling, grant an audience, welcome a stranger, live an examined life, open to a warts-and-all scrutiny, in season and out. v1 'Good and Pleasant' – dichotomising, there are living arrangements that are 'good' but not pleasant, or 'pleasant' but not good. Our unity is a moral good and a phenomenal delight. I am reading onto the text a little but good-dwelling we ought to do and pleasant-dwelling we get to do! Ours is the both-and life. .. v1 'Brothers [and sisters]' from ESVSB's note I appreciate something new. This Psalm acknowledges the rare pleasure, not only of non-conflictual sibling cohabitation, but also the rare occasion that the ground condition is sufficiently fruitful to sustain extended generations in one place. Unity's preconditions are obviously emotional-spiritual and yet also immediate-practical. How good and pleasant it would be that Lambeth might provide custom sufficient to employ the twelve Jackson offspring-to-be in our bakery in their truly best giftings. How good and pleasant that our home group might enjoy unity by the economic provision (+visas) to stay to nurture a locality long-term. .. v2 'Precious oil' – this enduring dwelling, even imaged in small ways, is a precious act of consecration. By our unity we are setting this Place apart, enacting spiritual dominion symbolically. .. v3 'Dew of Hermon' – this enduring dwelling is a practical agricultural sustaining: by our unity we are like water to the vegetable patch. Finally and beblessedly v2 'Beard..' - just saying..

...

200words: the artist

“...rejoice in the wife of your youth” Proverbs 5:18

A gestural film of eyebrows, this is physical comedy of a very high order. A wondrous gift, silently given. Unselfconsciously immune to accusations of pastiche because of the obvious pleasure taken in its making. This is a ravishing revisiting of the past, without irony, and such excellently executed tellings of history should be commended, were that the past was only dogs' tricks and tapdance. Hollywood's foundations, however, deserve to be visited with a more critical eye than this reaffirmation of institutionalised vacuity with its celebration of extramarital superficiality.

To understand this film, consider that Valentin embodies Hollywood: perpetually self-related and inevitably in crisis. One could scarcely ask for a more vivid parable of the life lived incurvatus in se: when you believe your own hype you will use people to make films rather than using films to love people. Our screen is so overpopulated with anti-heroes that we barely register that this film is resolved only when our protagonist trades in his outmoded wife of silent cinema for a new accessory to his pathological obsession with fame. Films about films defend technique in an unstable age of technique; acting about acting here defends the myth of the genius.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/

texting psalms 90-106

Being enpsalmed, a joy. As ever, we play with words on 07729056452.

Ps90 v12 Numbered days, and how to have the Time of your life. We count because time is not circular, Judeo-Christian time is linear – on its way somewhere. Numbering is a naming which is event-making, which is to time as place-making is to space in the image of man, rendering days as personal, intentional, sacred, sabbatical. Numbering, yeh, this is the life-verse of planners everywhere, but given that no one knows the day or time Mt 24v36, no numbering system would render a Trafalgar Square Timex countdown to any Aztec apocalypse viable. But we are counting down, counting down our advent calendars in eager expectation. And counting up. So we write our histories as they correspond to our prayers over numbered days, singing psalms that remind us of the good times, singing psalms that remind us of the best times. We number our days past to remember our previous v12 How-Long prayers faithfully answered, that they may be read by our children v16.

Ps91-92 How do you imagine a refuge? A cave? A tower? A tree? What is it like to be in a fortress? A tent v10? Playing like children, making dens with sheets to be safe...God, you are my refuge, show us more of what it feels like to be refuged by you, demonstrate to us your fortressing 92 v2 Good morning beloveds, declaring God's love for us, steadfastly over all this day (amazing). V12-15 was my prayer for two getting married, so I keep praying it for them and their marriage as they travel, and in that ask God that others would come and speak words into us. Grateful for this vision of the good life, of flourishing (like a tree) rooted in dwelling in God's dwelling, to bearing fruit in old age. I pray that we bear fruit in old age., that we end well, and that we are part of others' flourishing in old age, we pray in for now and today.

Ps93-94 Robes yeah. Clothing as a good metaphor here? The clothes here are not analogous to what God merely does, divorced from who he is. God would cease to be God if he ceased to be strong v1 and majestic v1. There is no God behind this God, he is the v2 everlasting One, v5 trustworthy One, uninvented One, preexistent preeminent One, 94v7,11 the all-knowing fore-knowing One. And Col1v15-18 has to remind us of this, less because we are apt to deny God as uncreated creator but that we are apt to dilute, diminish, and dualise in ways that try, in small ways, to assume for ourselves bits of God's autonomous authoring which is not ours. God is before us in his knowing 94v8. God is before us in his being 93v2. This is the absolute dichotomy, the chasm, the true upper storey, so to speak. There is a One God and there is creation. There is no bridge. No bridge but Jesus. No Jesus but a crucified Jesus, no necessity/sufficiency to a crucified Jesus except that he be the universe's point of origin. No point of origin except that it be singular, exclusive, Holy. .. I am arguing beond the text. .. God of 94. He v9 hears, v17 helps, v19 consoles. So let us trust and so let us be: v22 refugees and refugers: heard, helped, consoled, hearing, helping, consoling. In robes freely given, freely give. For joy.

Ps95-96 Happy wholes, these psalms, resisting too much deconstruction, asking rather for an abandonment, let's get swept up and praise God, shall we? Worhsip prasie worship, play play play. These are psalms that speak of the magic in the universe, found without overthinking in child's play, the magic in the universe we know is Col1 Jesus. So roar and shout and sing, yeah. And these put me in mind of all that's passive and unearned in our meeting this God, let's just receive him, shall we? Bow down 95v6 96v9, because its all there is to do sometimes. Worship. 96V1 sing sing a new song, yes, but don't overthink it .. sing it, sing it as the direct uncomplicated response that it is and can be. V6 glory and majesty, power and beauty.

Ps97-98 Why can ___ not see this God? How can I make this God harder to deny in my life? How am I obscuring the view of the lightening light of this God by my life? v1 The Lord reigns let ___ rejoice, let ___ be glad, v4 let ___ see, even tremble, v6 let ___ see your glory. 98 How is God made known? In salvation. And only sufficiently in salvation. Who has God saved? Me. Who needs to know? ..

Ps99-100 99v9 The Lord our God is holy. Forgetful of God's holiness, I would remember and v1 tremble. Take this seriously. Teach me to tremble. 100 Full of statement of objective truth about who God is, and the subjective response of authentic worship. I will commit to memorise this hundredth Psalm, its four verses of three lines. Thank God for such a psalm as this, full of truth, where declaring who God is v3 v5, we can know who we are and rest there: v3 God made us, we are his.

Ps101-102 v5 Whoever has a hauty look I will not endure. How to not endure an other without yourself being hauty in your look and arrogant in your heart!? We are called to a radical purity matched by a radical radical love. If and as I wobble in this, it is a defaulting to a comfort zone of acute religious hypocrisy or blandly loving liberality. Love without purity is harmful, purity without love is harmful. Jesus is our measure and supply for both love and purity. 102 Disconsolate owls, withered hearts of grass, forgetting to eat, and so unsupped and desapped, are devoured by an active ravaging depression, a Melancholia that is so nearly a true perception of a cruel world. Oh bulemia, suffering and the where-is-God-? question.v2 Speedily. v18 for the sake of your name on the tongues of our children. v25 It is important to let God be God, at one level, for the sake of our mental health, for the sake of our living in the true reality of things. v25-27 a right clothing metaphor establishes the right dichotomy, not between sacred-and-secular in an arbitrary sartorial partition, but rather, because earth-and-heaven are both in the created category, there is a One tailor and we are his poiema: hand-crafted, tailor-made, bespoken by the God who speaks us into being, moment by moment. Please God, speedily, do no leave us to ourselves, do not leave us to ourselves.

Ps103 8-15 Grace. Expensive grace. I had the sensation in church yesterday that sometimes I'd rather God wasn't gracious with me, a resigned fatalism is so much easier, graciousness is overwhelming ego-destroying .. grace acknowledged cannot go unresponded to, so we have to pick ourselves up again, surrender again. God's grace will not leave us to the comfort of ourselves, I need to hear this again. v12 Like talk of the God who 'forgets' our sins and places them at a distance, as if they could still be there lurking on the periphery of vision, (ambiguous indexicals) rather, there is no distance between east and west, their mutual exclusivity tells us that our sins are no more. Thank you, God and lend us an ability to articulate this. v14-18 remembering dust to dust, and our own dustiness, our own embodied, mortal and finite being. Remembering this in remembering that we are not responsible for everything, only God is, and he knows us and loves us where we are.

Ps104 Bless. The. Lord. O. My. Soul. 104 Creating creation. What would it mean to practice creationism? The literality of creationism should be judged less on its truth as history, which will be unknowable for now, but rather on its beauty when demonstrated in the moment. So aim with for all things bright and beautiful at all times and in all places. So, doing creationism – 14-15 making wine, as Jn2, this is dominion done well, a traceable God-honouring diet of conspicuously 'created' ingredients. 27-28 caring for animals, sustaining them and dominion done well. And the over-arching creationism of living a life rhythmed in six days, building to a climax of dominion's demonstrable delight. Let us seek to be literal six day creationers, let us make it our song and our work.

Ps105-106 Seek. His. Presence. Continually. Actively, earnestly, desperately be looking. Him, the One that Is. Presence, immanence, Emmanuel, amongst us, within us. Non-stop, without ceasing, in every breath you take. 106 Singing songs about our unfaithfulness. v13, v19, v24, v28, v32 This is not the emphasis of our v1 #Give thanks to the Lord our God and King, his love endures forever.. Lamenting our lack of lament hymns, again. I need to learn to lament well, and to remember the reality of God meeting me in my unfaithfulness again and again. I fall off the horse and I tend to wallow, and this is the sin of counting-yourself-out, of exacerbating the sin of stumbling with the sin of claiming the know better than God's forgiveness. 104 God sustains creation. 105 God sustains us. 106 Inspite of our unfaithfulness. Bless the Lord, O My Soul.

texting psalms 73-89

If you felt the gap while I was away writing things architectural, there are unceasing Psalms via unlimited texts on 07729056452. I flatter myself.

Ps73-74 Job revisited. Over problematising the problem of evil is a demanding all knowledge without acknowledging the challenges present by what we *do know*. Trying to make sense of suffering is intellectually exhausting v17 and an exercise in distraction from worship. Rather, let us take as much as we *do know*, as much has been revealed of God v28 and his goodness v1, and take this as an intellectual sanctuary v17 and out of that safety live a life less bitter v21, less envious v3 and increasingly certain. Doxological epistemology as an antidote to that temptation to introversion in the face of the problem of suffering. Or on why we should not suffer in silence. .. Ps 74 Memory. God doesn't have a memory surely? Like, how can a train get lost? God's memory is our best analogy for the not-known and not-mended of the not-yet in which we now live? In such petitions we appeal to God's selective memory, that he would make the past present (as memory does). God please remember: the congregation v2 you chose and loved in the past; the covenant v20 you promised and kept for them in the past. We ask of God's memory, selective forgetting for our sins Hb8v12. If God is Reality, if he forgets something, it ceases to exist. Accordingly, he can't forget it unless it ceases to exist (syllogistic salvation?). So death. So the Cross is God's only and sufficient forgettery. Let's not settle for an anemic amnemonic God, but a warm blooded incarnate One who bled for the forgetting of our sins. .. Also interesting here is the translation of v3's perpetual ruins. Ruins, memory, perpetuity, lamentation and Coventry cathedral deserve an Is58v12 text of their own. .. Blameless ones, God sees a sinless you. So, forgetting what lies behind..

Ps75-76 The name of God and the glory of God. 75V1 God's name is near us 76v1 God's name is great in israel, in the community of those in love with Him. This is why we should pray the Jesus prayer, allowing God's name to be our thoughts' pattern and cry. Jesus name should be woven into the very fabric of our being, closer that breathing. & contained within this prayer-as-breathing a fear and trembling, a breathless awe before the God to be feared, worship for God the almighty holy other, God the righteous judge, God to whom I am subject, God who sees me as I am, reverential worship wells us in both these psalms as today we repeat and treasure the name of God. Breathlessly breathing Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Ps77-78 Pray out loud. It makes a difference for me in my praying. Aloud. We are bodies embodied, let us engage everything that is of God in the movement of air, wind, breath and in singing, sounding, speaking an aloud prayer that is entimed, that enters a room, that echoes, that carries one out of oneself, out of half-finished half-felt sentences of interior monologues. In a similar way, to some extent, texting has forced me to pray in whole sentences and so to curtail my self-deception. Pray aloud for a time will come when you may cease to be able to v4 as Rm8v26. .. Speak aloud to God, speak aloud to the flock 78v2. Speak aloud and teach our children to speak aloud v6. Speak aloud because God has spoken in giving a testimony and written law v5 .. Preach the gospel, use words if you have to. You have to, fairly quickly fairly often. (Analogous to talking about sex: not using words with a frequency and weight commensurable with the power and value of sex is a symptom of dysfunction and a recipe for misconstrued misinformation). Preach the gospel, because if our generation assumes it, our children's will forget it and their children will deny it. Preach the gospel, use words, cite history, at length v72, for ours is an apologetic for the long faithfulness of God from the long faithfulness of God. Oh hope in God. Cycles of church pain can be broken. Hope in God, Is49v15. Unforgotten unforgetters.

Ps79-80 The Lord is still still still my shepherd, 79v13 80v1 Thank you God, for your shepherding us as night falls, thank you for being our shepherd this evening. Teach us to be sheeply, but not sheepish. And teach us to image you in being rightly shepherdly to the flcok you have given us. 79V1-3 v10, bodies and blood, as we think about embodiment ... God thank you for making out bodies the site of our meeting you, where we may experience sickness, shame and persecution, you bring your infinite glory into our finitude. You are the God who meets us boundlessly, though we are bounded. What a glorious mystery. 80V8 Roots. Rootedness and flourishing and being kept alive v18 ... I don't need to hear anything more on the virtues of rootedness now ... Lord, rather, please lead us in embodying it in the grapevine belovedness that is our true identity. We long to know you, merciful and good God.

Ps81-82 v1 Aloud again, because in these two days I have forgotten again. ESVSB: The privilege of hard words. True. Oh for a hard word heard well. And rejoiced in. Hard words, soft people, there's today's Driscollism, hard but not harsh Pr15v1. God correct me by hard breaking of my resistance to gentle ways.. v10 Open wide. Ours is a bacon and eggs reality. Let us never not tell that, emphatically, ours is a feasting God. Perhaps a meditation on this mouth fast-ened open, how wide and long a wait between fillings? Fortnightly v3? Combining the parade of 81, the gods and injustice of 82, and probably some of my Carlyle hangover, I am put in mind of the They Don't Care About Us video. In so far as we are gods, let us dance a deliverance of the needy from the wicked.

Ps83 Shame v16-17. Let me think about shame some more, not because it's impressive or intelligent or any other idol, but this seems to be a real calling for this time. Because it matters, and because of Jesus. These two verses tell us of the way that shame can put us in touch with reality, it can have us acknowledging that there is a God. Shame can reveal ourselves to ourselves and so v16 have us seeking the saviour we need. So use us move us, and them, Jesus. Maybe v16 is a right and healthy shame, which can bring us to life, while v17 is a pathological shame that leads to death (doesn't quite work) – but shame is a choice, of the Dt30v15 kind. How will we respond in our shame? How will we enable others to respond in their shame? Choose life. Jesus make this concrete, and heal me and forgive me please, I choose life. I choose life, and the unashamedness that comes with holy shame brought before you. Please being yourself into our work and words on shame and shaming.

Ps84 How lovely is the dwelling place of God, lovely in its loveliness because it is God's home, and our longing for home and dwelling is bound us with our longing for God. On this, Simon May in 'On Love' defined love as that which roots us, that by which we are at home, so defining his phenomenology of love in terms of a phenomenology of home, which I'm not sure of, but it draws us to thinking about a phenomenology of home. What is being-at-home and not-being-at-home like, really? This longing desperately faithing for the courts of God, and the joy of being-there where he is speaks of something of this. Let us nest close by you Lord, for it is so blessed, may we lay our young at your altar that they would experience your beauty from birth in this dwelling there is singing v2,4 surrendering v5,12 strengthening v5,6 supplication, shielding v9 and springing-up of life v6. Springs of living water, longed for, springs that spring up in the dwelling place of God, where we are to make our home. Oh lets let this be a psalm for the prayer room that will be.

Ps85-86 v8 Forgetful ones. Remembering our God is near. On which basis alone we can dwell poetically, and gloriously thus: v10-11 if we are spatialising Nature-and-Grace, it is a lover's embrace. Dear ones, this here is Holy Play, the interplay, that minglement of God among his creation. Balletically, romantically, God dwells, among us, This is the Holy entanglement we image and experience in Play. And so, warmed by the sun of righteousness, sapling faithfulness buds from the ground. Oh God is so involved. 86 v2 Godliness is a being and a doing: we Are his image bearers 82v6 but we avoid disfiguring that image only in so far as we Do trust that God is God. Trusting is a calling upon v7 is a lifting up souls v4 is a crying out v3. Trusting is prayer and a learning to pray. V11 Teach me to pray and to be one single-minded one in a unity of mind-heart-body towards a steadfast pursuit of the one thing.

Ps87-88 88 An honest psalm in times of acute distress, but also for the day-by-day and the now and for all these things in modelling desperation in prayer, persistence in prayer and faithfulness in prayer, actually. God make us desperate, persistent and faithful, alongside the joy, certainty and promise of 87. Let us take hold of this for London, and for our London, starting with our flock – v3 glorious things of you are spoken, oh city of God. May we know that we are citizens of Zion and so v7 sing and dance and excel creatively in every direction specifically and personally, bursting forth all into springs, springs of living water. Let's take this as a word to us specifically, this will be, let's take God at his prophetic promise.

Ps89 Our God v7, Our God, is an awesome, Awesome God, and singing of his love forever is how our psalmic days should start: the verse one of my penning January's ninth numbered day should be a declaration v1of a confidence in God's character ahead of all the day's yet unseen unhappened happenings. ... v15 Do you know the festal shout? .. Of prosperity, the counter point to Marks' ambiguous preaching in that way is a visiting the harder times with appropriate lament, as v38-51 ... v45 is my essay: we lose ornament to our naked shame for not having come as a playing youth.

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Ps42 Pants. There are those who see breathless and knackered Christians staggering through a fruitless damaging Christian life. With one who sees such, last night was a long v3 'Where is your God?' conversation and a remembrance of throngs past. A Lk24v21 'We had hoped..' (Resurrection comes in tomorrow's chapter) Be lead, beloved and believe. We are the belead, lead by a Jn1v9 light full of grace and Jn1v14 truth. Hopesing all things for today, for us, for our households, for sober conversations with tipsy colleagues.

Ps43-44 43v3 'Send your light and your truth; may they lead me, and bring me back to Zion' – puts me in mind of what we wait for this advent. Waiting for Jesus, the explosively scandalously incarnate God. I feel like I only touch the hem of Jesus' cloak but I want to look him in the face, for I believe that Jesus is v4 the source of my happiness. Bring us back, God, bring us back to Zion, bring us back to the nativity scene. 44v1 The nativity scene is like this, as all the gospels, as every individual testimony – we've heard stories, but Jesus we desire that you walk off the pages of the text. you are v21 the God who knows our secret thoughts, you know who we love, how we hurt, how we bear false witness. you come to us, light and truth, among the mixed motives and schizophrenic emotions of the psalms, among questions, frustrations & sufferings let those we love see the incarnate God meeting us in these, especially those in church pain.

Ps45-46 Stirred and skillful, learnt and scriptural // here is a worshipping word: marital // In singing harmonic lyrics of love // Together Up In and Out we are of // a God we are known by // Oh God would we show thy // Wedding day allegories from above .. Form over function frequently in my poetic excursies. There are affirmations offered here to the He and the She which need not be exclusive or sufficient or definitive. But they are a necessary starting point, to speak these over the He's who would seek God in their gender, and the She's who would seek God in theirs. Prayers for He, v2 for grace graced lips, for a joy annointment, imparted gladness, v2/4 for humble handsomeness (vs vanity, vs contempt for his body) v4 for the leaving of travelling away from home in the defence of justice, v6 for the royal confidence and its respective submission to a duty to serve the gift of inheritance, v5 for the excellent targeted use of technology to achieve God's commission. And She, that she would know that she enthralls, you enthrall the King, you are a desired delight, embellish celebrate frame and declare, unambiguously, this is a body and person that God made v13 glorious, wonderful in its form, and for She, for companions, praying and wishing the excellence of this for you, against mere association of all the poisonous ways of gathering and cruel lonely unknownness, oh for sagacious discipling companionship, for wise women and their apprenticing an excellence in the tacit ways of womanning. 46 Very present help. Image this God. May we be present and very present to those who need help. Oh He is with us, He is God.

Ps47-48 Adoration first. God I do, I will, I will choose to worship you even if all else falls apart. You are God. 48 I read this Psalm on my birthday this year, in a time of desperate prayer. Cement these words in us God. This is a psalm for the desperate. Knowing our v3 v8 safety in God is sufficient for our being able to risk all things, you know? Hear this again. We are safe in God, we can risk all whilst smiling. Taking v6-7 out of context, thinking about maritime analogies vs birthing analogies (falling slowly playing in this afternoon's coffeeshop. God?) Let us embrace the hope and the fear of the birth metaphor for this time, teach us the risk, the adventure, of new things, of unknowns, of responsibilities. Speak into us what this metaphor means concretely in the present, in real life. Come Lord Jesus, thank you that you teach us patiently, thank you for being my fortress.

Ps49-50 Issuing a call for more riddling v4 hymns in our hymnal. The plated cake and Christianity's excellent answer to the question of suffering. We are not only free to choose to calibrate our suffering (as Buddhists) on an eternal scale, but we can flip the scale which measures suffering upside-down. Indulge me a little confectionery exploration. There is a relationship between cake on the plate and pie in the sky. Can we say that if we deny pie we will know not how to bake cake? Could we even say that the very ingredients of our cake are but pie crusts and crumbs that fall from heaven's table, that all culture is only a doggy-bag take-away trickle-down from the communion table? Outside of this metaphor, the 'understanding' that distinguishes v20 from v12, is a resurrection reality, and in that is a death-subverting, suffering-redeeming joy that surpasses all cake: our suffering redeemer who redeems suffering: the baked goods (Jn4v34) on his plate were shame, pain and death. Food and aforethought: let us plan for suffering, even let us plan to suffer. Ps50, briefly. As we do bread and eat suffering, let us never presume it is a duty paid to a God who needs performance. v12 He is the cake-baking, pie-making, all-sufficient One. Every other purveyor of cake and circuses is a fake, oh 49v14 sheep, beware the lights of London, beware the yeast of the Pharisees. Come Jesus to a ravenous London. Come Jesus, v12 unhungry one, give us today, make us today, be for us today our daily bread.

Ps51-52 Psalm 51 Oh everything I love about this God, truth in the inmost parts, truth deep in my bones, deep deep truth, deep mercy, deep love, unspeakable mysterious life. Oh joy and gladness, the old has gone the new has come. Keep us away from boring objectifying and that, keep us in your temple, keep our hearts broken and contrite and wondering at this beauty truth. So 51v10-12 repeated today, a sinner's prayer, again and again. 'Renew' has been the word of the day. New-ness, surprising and unexpected, like being in a foreign country, alive to the sights and sounds... & 'steadfast' – feels like the anti-thesis of (re)newness, if newness is a child-like unexpected pleasure, the steadfastness is a bit grown-up, it plans ahead and puts down deep roots. but oh, both of these. How these come together is a mystery to me, but they do, this is the life possible. God we need you more than breathing, this is why you cannot leave us, oh Holy Spirit, come close, to restore the joy of your salvation, remembering the freedom of this God. Sustain us, gifting us with willingness, a plea to remake us, reconfigure the architecture of our minds so our wills align with yours. Being here (52v8-9 be as a tree)

Ps53-54 54v4 Behold, God is my helper. When we are beheld, is God, conspicuously, our helper? Let us make public our predicaments, publish our problems, and live a life examined that 53v6 when, not if, God saves, God would get the praise. We live as demonstrations of our convictions, as demonstrations of the possible, before a watching, waiting, doubting, hurting world; a v3 fallen away world, an v4 ignorant world. We live in a God-made God-saved world. This needs to be said, this needs to be sung, this needs to be leant upon as flying buttresses in our plausibility cathedral, with a passion for its beauty and an urgency to its structure.

Ps55-56 The fear of intimacy is the fear of this, of abandonment, of love unreturned. There are wounded people all around us, betrayed by those they love, and wounded people wounding other people, and begeting wounded children. v22 God is the defender lover healer of this pain, and I feel in this our call to image God in being safe places for people, for being trustworthy, as God is v23 trustworthy. God let us be unforsaken unforsakers, the hands that hold the hands of those in relational pain. It is such a fearful thing, that which people can do to other people, both these psalms are full of warring. I am more exposed to BBC News 24 in this house than normal: our world is full of warring. Persecution, abuse and unkindness, and I am overwhelmed and afraid as 55v4-5 I want to hide from this volume of war: on why we wish for wings v6 like Conor's eagle in FishTank, escapism not real freedom. Jesus teach me neither flinching nor numbness to war, teach me to pray for a world at war, I don't know how to. v9-10 There are riots in this city, there is destruction inthis world. Let me not read these lamenting Psalms as a bourgeois individual existential angst, but a plead for deep mercy justice peace restoration for a world at war. There is no hope without God. But. There. Is. A. God. Christ the suffering servant, the prince of peace, Christmas miracle, we believe in you to make beauty from ashes. We plead that 56v13 the world would walk in the light of your presence.

Ps57-58 Till the storms. There is a memory of ones I have known who have been weathered by hurricanes, and they are marked by a right sense of awe. v8 Awake my glory. My glory, interchangeable with 'my soul', (with perhaps an emphasis more on the centre and pinnacle of your being, where 'soul', to my mind, connotes a certain sum of your invisible/visible parts?) People disbelieve in the soul, or at least problematise it, or at least neglect it. Let us speak with them of their glory, that which is noble in reason, infinite in faculty, admirable and angelic. That which, beneath woozy eyes and fickle heart, is there is them, albeit disfigured. So my glory is disbelieved, it can also be asleep. The process of waking profits some meditation. I, and neither my soul, am not a machine to be simply switched on. A spiritual rousing, a caffienating cold shower collecting of ones thoughts and arranging of the imagination's furniture, a flinging open of the eye's curtains, a muscle-stretching of the heart strings, a sun-warming on the skin. Awake my soul, in all of my sense and sense of the possible in God's world. 58 Refearing God, lest we forget. This passage is directed at the powerful v1 you gods, you mighty lords. This is not them, this is us. We, western white young professionals, are tyrants by default, unless-otherwise-stated, from the womb, v3, and we stop out ears v4, that by willed ignorance we might go on in comfort while the world that serves us goes to hell. Our privilege is not unrelated to the underprivileged. FishTank is real, is near, is within my power to alleviate, albeit in small ways. Boring Christianity internalises faith, domesticates God and trivialises injustice: By. Doing. Nothing. Oh God, awake my soul and put me to work among the nations. For joy.

Ps59-60 God, we give you thanks & praise, that when we were still far off, you met us in your Son & brought us home. We are far from you in our 59v2 evil, v3 cruelty, v4 hurriedness, v12 pride, false witness. We are like snarling dogs. And Jesus, you have come to transform this. You have heard the Psalmist's cry to 60v2 heal the wounds of the Earth, this is your project and purpose in Jesus (thank you), but you have not done so by the kind of destructive might envisaged by the Old Testament worldview 59v11 60v5. No, you saved, save, will save the world with the kind of vulnerability that makes possible a love that is stronger than death. Impossible extravagant God, we wonder worship marvel around the manger this morning, believing in our bones that everything is different because Christ was born, the universe has imploded and been made new again. From yesterday: Christ, who by his incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly, fill you with peace and make you partakers of the divine nature; & the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. // So I am spoken to about the way that Bethlehem's birth is that through which the new earth and heaven come to be, through Jesus God makes our home and his the same, through Jesus we can imagine a starry London.

Ps61-62 Awake my soul 62v1/5 O wait my soul. Patience. Waiting when it is hard, waiting when it hurts, waiting when it is called foolish, we wait to listen, we wait to be stretched in faith, stretched out like pre-stressed concrete, we wait because true love waits, we wait because those who do renew their strength, we wait because waiting qua waiting anticipates and conspicuously speaks, to everyone who sees you on the platform, that you believe God's train will come. .. We are transitive verbs in transition. Playing with words perhaps muddies the truth I want to express. We are not faithing into the void, God is there, a rock. When I express, 'I trust God' (transitive) the God there is less than fully rockish in my sense of his substance. Would that I might become (transition) one who knows God as I know rocks, bricks and solid ground. .. God save the Queen 61v6 and prayers for our country. My neither/nor position of detached critique defined sceptically against the excesses of our state and the failures of capitalism take for granted that which is God-given in the peace of the governance of England, and hold in contempt the police and everything that works well. Pray with me against my tendency to unteachable scorn, aloof idealism and ingratitude in the face of social v10 riches. .. v8 Ever sing and daily vow. So this is public and worship, but what is a vow? How do we vow? What, actively, is our part in the covenant, daily? .. 62v2 He alone. There is a false refuge at play in the regressive immaturities that surface in me at home, and it is a running from (refugee) the battle of serving the parents well by speaking and strengthing such as to differentiate this season as their loving loved but undependent offspring. This is a desperate prayer, for growing up. My emotional sufficiency and grounds for bold adventuring must come from God first and should be sufficient from him if they were to come from him alone, because the gospel we preach with our lives must be good news to orphans. Have a phrased that without dichotomising? It is to fight escapsim in my life, that holds me back and indulges the fantasies of both me and the parents. Happy homes yes. But we are a mission home. We rest in God's refuge and eat from God's supply and it is urgent to do this conspicuously. Oh God, grow me up. Our refuge, rescue us.

Ps63 v1 God you are my God and I long for you, my whole being desires you like a dry and worn-out land, like the desert in need of water, like the Arctic tundra in need of sun. Longing, aching, hungry, thirsty, desperate. God we are desperate. I cannot pretend I don't long for you, need you. I do desperately do, it's the reason I cannot leave. v2 let me see you, please let me see you, let me glimpse your face to look you in the face, please be near, be close, do not be far off, please do not hide from us. Please let me touch you, brush my fingers up against you, v8 I cling to you, I need you, I need your assurance God, you are my safety. Nothing and no-one else will do. I cry out to you. My body knows it was made to worship a God who is real, my voice made to worship, we need you. My mind is small and cluttered and confused without you God, my heart heavy and oppressed without you, and v5 my soul starved without you. But v7 in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. Oh I love to be here, shadow of God's wings.

Ps 65-66 There is a spiritistic worldview that considers all of nature to be animated by a host of spirits. The hills are alive here, and all of creation's tree's Is55v12 hands clapping and rocks Lk19v40 crying out are but a poet's inflection away from an Avatarian delight in a thoroughly personal universe. Avatar goes awry in divinising a closed system, but the personal universe, we live on the cusp of that allegory, the fulcrum of that head of a pin, the wire walked between heresy and vacuity, but there dance we. .. v4 Dwelling in your courts.. the goodness of your house. Nearness. Who has courts today? Is this language of proximity still current? God, we dwell in your zone 1? Perhaps/ We work for an alternative, redistributed nodality, but there is a centredness to our being-with God gatherings. Ours is a festival clustering, contrasted with the financial fortress clusterings of the City. 66V11,12 We and us. Let's sing about us, a Londonist hymnal. Let's tell a story that's not in an international style, not in a lowest common denominator language, let's write lyrics only we can sing, about somewheres only we know, irreducible Places. For everything that is bizarre and wrong with the Jerusalem hymn at least it frames the picture and asks the question: Did those feet? Did they build? Could we? Here?

Ps67 Still Jesus. Still Jesus, born to transform mercy justice. Still Jesus who tells us of the kindness of God. Still Jesus who sets about transforming us to that others take notice. Still Jesus who restores relationships, who is salvation itself, the hope of nations. This sixty=seventh for Jesus-centred missional dwelling.

Ps68 Evil melts like wax in the prescence of God. This is why I melt in the presence of God. (Even now, God, would you allow me close, confessing, to be me melted down again). This is why we cannot really come before God and stay the same, the heat of His holiness will destroy what we are, He can't but not, as in Ps22v14, my heart of stone melted down to be transformed into a heart of flesh Ez36v26, even now. This is a song of triumph, but one has to play, participate and perservere in order to taste this. The GNB translation of v13: “why did some of you stay among the sheep pens on the day of battle?” - Why did you do what was convenient but better good? Let's not be in the wrong place, let's be in the thick of it.

Ps69-70 Visiting Shame throughout, because persecution, fellowship and worship are all intersubjective. .. I find here: Zeal. Humility. Seeking. Thanksgiving. ~ which I have resisted manhandling into an ACTS correspondence, but it almost could... Zeal. Zeal v9 entails a profound shamelessness Rm1v16. Zeal's zealousness is somewhat like Marmite by analogy of distinctiveness. Love it, Hate it v4. Without [moral] cause. Perhaps our psalmist is not bated from a cause, but for a cause. Rebels without a cause delight to hate, and the zealous, by their marmite aroma, 2Cor2v16, present themselves for reproach v9 on God's behalf. Humility. The repentance of v6 recognises our unity as a church. As with church pain, there is also church shame, we are one body because we are all tarred with the one brush. So, repent, when you bring reproach, and remember, when you bear reproach, that we are not better than them. Seeking. 70v4 69v5. Let us be and be known as those who seek, who love, who hope, who seek: we are seekers Mt6v33, sought Lk9v10. .. Thanksgiving. V30 Magnifying glasses and the optics of making God visible. Sensitive seekers, with your senses seek him, pore (and pour) over his world, with wide eyes, that by the light in your eyes, he would be known.

Ps71 A Psalm for New Year's Eve, a prayer for the steady rush of days ahead, thankfulness for what has been, hope for the future, and desperate dependence in the present moment. God, thank you for all that is swept up in you, the womb's nurturing and the faithful grey-haired. Our necessarily intersubjective existence includes our being necessarily intergenerational, try as we might to escape it..prayers for our grandparents, parents, siblings, children. For those unborn for whom we will be especially responsible, for those so old we are especially responsible. v17-18 Thank you for what has been, please keep us faithful.

Ps72 When Jesus reigns in fullness, people will v16 blossom in the cities, ah. There is so much we cannot say about this fullness, about how (v7) the sun and the moon may be transformed, the fabric of existence so other than at present, but we can taste, embody, pursue taste something of the heavenly city: it's v12 deliverance, v13 salvation, v14 liberation, peace, recognition of the value of each life, v15 continual prayer, abundance and flourishing for all. Come, Lord Jesus.

200words: McElheny at Whitechapel

“For now we see through a glass, darkly...” 1Corinthians 13:12a

McElheny gifts us with a kaleidoscopic remix of the end of history, a disbelieving backward glance through a shattered rear-view mirror. We, twenty-first century gallery goers, delight to piece together the glittery pluperfect remains of an abstracted past we don't even believe in?

“So either you can believe there is this thing called history, which is [...] a linear narrative with a definable thrust to it, or you could say that there's just a lot of different stories” Josiah McElheny, 2010

There is a lot of different stories. The safest story is the story of me, myself and my subjectivity: that on peering down the well of so-called history, we see only our reflected, storied selves staring back at us. The mirrors, which abound in this piece, reflect this notion of history while also conspiring to manifest a narcissist's rogues gallery?

“The more fearful this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.” Paul Klee, 1915

So, in a difficult world, as moths to a proverbial lamp, we cluster in galleries for the comfort of flickering globes and ambient sound, the therapy of an abstracted reality, for self-medicated hypnosis under the legitimating guise of high culture?

“..seeing one of these moths that have met their end in my house, I wonder what kind of fear and pain they feel while they are lost.” WG Sebald, Austerlitz p133

What images we do make out through the haze and fractures: the lightening strikes, lolloping storks, and corridors, are intriguing and beautiful, as glimpses into a hope deferred, a modernist's heartsickness, signs of a definable thrust? Dear ones, it's not too late to know, be known, and to be reconciled to our past.

“...but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1Corinthians 13:12b

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texting psalms 1-41

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Ps1-2 Psalt for preppers: be ready: bring a new new song for a new new wine. We come to the Psalms right on time, a prayerbook for a prayerful season. What are the chances? .. 1v1 Let us be the blessed nonscoffers if we possibly can. Oh God give us grace for that. Note the progression: whose counsel have I let in? What cause did I pause for? And where have I ended up sitting? Reverse engineer your seating plan. 1v2 The law must be read kept understood through the frame of delight. Delight and not duress. My meditation is this: Pharisees pacing about a dry empty swimming pool, muttering devising even celebrating that the water-tightness of the structure keeps out the elements.. Only we know, the water-tightness is to keep water in, so that we can play, swim and be delightedly buoyant. Delight that we have a reciprocal covenant of exclusive love with the God of everything, ridiculous aye. 1v3 Be as a tree in you metaphor and simile: an oak of righteousness, be green and full of sap in your old age, be a mustard 'tree' to nest in, be shelter and be shade. 2v1 Our intercontinental ballistic rattles thrown from the pram in a storm on teacup earth. It is laughable, in retrospect (a perspective God is able to take of past and future) how much energy we waste raging and plotting. 2v4 What sort of laughter? Surely a laughter of love. Would that I laughed at least as much as Tony. Laughing like kids in the playpool, entirely safe, haptically delighted, holy mischief makers. Oh to laugh at myself much today, for God's grace is more than a little ridiculous.

Ps3-4 4v4 I have been thinking about how my prayerfulness is helped and hindered by risings early or layings in bed, openness to learning to pray better asks for a re-examination of these. Let me ask 3v5 4v8 God be in our bedtimes, in our lyings awake, in our sleep, in our dreams, and our wakings to new days. In you, God to live and move and have our being, so be welcomed into our sleep lives. God our shield, safety and salvation, our glory and joy, be welcomed into this new day, I want to meet with you.

Ps5-6 Words: boasts v5, lies v6, flattery v9: sins of propagating unreality. Sins of thought and words indeed: failing the onefold by dualising? failing to have our yes be yes? failing to keep it real? failing to be steadfast as God is steadfast. God's steadfast love is our means 5v7 and our end 6v4, he is our beginning and our end. .. Beginning with morning sacrifice 5v3, before the day has happened, we expectant anticipate, pay-it-forwarding, confident to spend our first fruits first on him. .. Singing 5v11: Reverse engineer your singing plan, where singing is a fruit of confidence is a fruit of knowing you are loved is a fruit of pausing to sing. This is the virtuous cycle of tacit knowledge, of knowing through doing, of integrating faith and works. Sing to love to sing. .. 6v3 How long? How long will we not have for not having asked Jm4v2?

Ps7-8 Small meditations to bring forth trees of life.. God the judge, who searches hearts and minds, make me transparent.. Thank you for your glorification on the lips of children, let us learn.. What are human beings that you are mindful of us? Who am I that you care for me, know my name? Human beings, human beings, all around us today, these image bearers crowned a little lower than the angels, in the library, across the table, buying tube tickets. Let us glory to God by loving human beings, and being very fully human.. Dominion and dominioning and the urban landscaping, God? Glory to God, let us glory to God, glory glory glory to God.

Ps9-10 9v1-2 I will give thanks, I will recount, I will be glad, I will sing. Will I, will you, will we? Will I stand? Arms high? Heart abandoned? God willing, I will: future tenses risk a presumption of grace. God let me be faithful one more day, as in 13-14 the if-then and because for our worship is God's graciousness, his sustaining, his permission. .. 10 The silence v13 of a forgetful v11, hidden v1, distant v1, blind v11 God, who is not there v4, and does not care v5. Should we speak so when it feels such? {LACTS?] Our lamentable laments are shallow because we cushion ourselves with cheap grace and simulated salvation. The 'blacks' I mangled in last night's exposition might be these, the dark dark places on various spectrums, the extremities of God's apparent absence. Pray that I would cry better and more often, in better accord with the emotional range demanded by the scale of grace I have received.

Ps11-12 Topping and tailing with God's trustworthiness and our corresponding safety 11v1 12v6 v8 for 11v3 there is something for good people do when everything falls apart., and this is a trusting God. Reading Psalms after reading Job, the Psalmic and Jobic worldviews correspond here: God is so good. God we can trust and keep trusting.

Ps13-14 v3 Light up my eyes, light up my eyes, light up my eyes. To theologise sleep and so to both allegorise and practicalise. What is sleep? What is waking? How, practically can we rise like children, Tiggers for Jesus, on Christmas day every day.. Awakeness contrasted with a deathly sort of sleep, depressive day-sleeping, a curtain-closed numbness, the escapist dulling of the senses in an overindulged haze. My indulgences in bought and word and feed: in retail, in irony, in the gap filling saviour of comfort foods. Help me beyond help, save me. Oh God, rest us well, rise us well, rouse a fearlessness. Wake a waker within us, among us, for this winter time, as the darkness closes in. God we wait eagerly for your breaking dawn, we are now with Mary in her advent pregnancy. Come Lord Jesus Come. I need you. v7 Let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad. Let us? He has let us. So, let's. Let us. Lit eyes.

Ps15-16 Regarding security, both of these. v15 words and money, recurring themes, how they are patterned in our lives depends on our knowing (or lack of knowing) security in God. We should talk about this less abstractly soon. v16 secure in God's goodness we can bear the knowledge of our conscience. So I come to Psalm late at night, v7 in the night my conscience warns me. Not the angst of laying awake at night indulgently tortured or regretful, but conscientiously conscious of who we are to be made better. In favour of one's nighttime conscience, as with mirrors: because not all self-knowledge is self-indulgent... So lay us down to sleep, God, in holy knowledge. Thank you for v3 our community, v8 your presence, v9 our security in you, v11 you our joy.

Ps17-18 God our knight and day. v3 God our nocturnal mystery shopper: surely God was in this place. 18 v19 Have we our hands tied? So long we for release from the claustrophobia of our sin. v29 The Lord is my Matrix, my blue pill, my rabbit hole. By him we can take time to make time to bend time and walk on water. v35 By gentleness we are overcome to overcome. .. God's way v30 becomes our way v32 when we follow him down it. Blamelessness is in the following: we are that following following. Singing as we go.

Ps19-20 Sky yes. Today's confident cool blue. A sky with a purpose, not ad hoc and not unconstant. The sun with a happy purpose and a linear narrative, from one end of the sky to the other. God what a mystery. v12 No-one can see her own errors, deliver me from wilful sins, don't let them rule me, as they do. You can rule me, God, really. God in these thoughts, from the centre to the edge, reconfigure my thoughts and my imagination. I need a way of imagining Jesus so that he can rule me. 20 So trust. And trust, it begets hope.

Ps21-22 This the show-and-tell of Jesus' body broken: I'll tell my brother v22, our congregation v22, the world's end v27, unto a generation yet unborn v31. What are we telling? What have we been shown? Treasuring Christ and the call to suffer. I am called to suffer. That is my calling. To do hard things, bear heavy weights and stand in the way of bullets. Ps22 tells how and tells why. The how requires calibration and perspective. Calibrating our suffering against the innocent-sufferer-par-excellence here prophesied. And history's perspective's assurance v5 v9 v10 v21 v24 on which basis we have faith in future grace, and a vision for what will be achieved by suffering by Christ via ou bearing our cross in/of/as witness. Why am I so troubled this morning by the shortcomings in my theology of suffering? Fruitlessness and the fear of pruning perhaps? Yesterday's challenge's to risk: by Y regarding communication, by Driscoll regarding marriage and hospitality and by the Navs regarding Sabbath. Suffering is key. Indulge me in a little wander longer than a text is a sensible medium for. The cake-on-the-plate-while-you-wait corrective to an underrealised eschatology would be helpful if we lived in a Danish Lutheran fishing village before Babette. But we don't. Our generation knows no not-yet. And the why of our suffering and the pie in our sky is this: that Christianity would endure to our grandchildren's England. There is no cake in that, we will be dead. Part of me is convicted to take every comfort, luxury and advert-elevated-'need', and not to throw it away, and so become a Danish fishing village, but to throw them in to the Sabbath, The whole lot, meat cake espresso hot-showers lie-ins.. So by suffering their absence 6 days a week, we might image a heaven worth waiting for and create Sunday worth resting on. And this is not legalism, to delay gratification to heighten pleasure is hedonism. Enough. And I am being flippant in the light of Jesus body broken. v17, hear the sound of bones cracking today. The life we live is amazing. Bought at a cost. Grateful also, God, for my parents v4 who trusted.

Ps23-24 So the Lord is my shepherd. THE: the definite article, there is only one God. The LORD: and none else, no other idol, not myself, not these other gods, may it be. IS: not a might be or a was or a will be, but present, definite, matter of fact. MY: even mine, even me, for I am know, not as impersonal data, but as a lover, mother, brother. And also in this the call to our always choosing – something of the truth of existentialism's dread, our kirkegaardian on this God I stake my life. SHEPHERD: Jeus the good shepdherd who lays down his life for the sheep, I want to imagine you thus, the sheep know hiw voice, because he gathers us, cares, keps, intends good for us, sacrifices, risks for us. I know Jesus loves me, because he risked himself for me. Thinking about Otford's sheep, there is something honest and uncomplicated about the shepherd-sheep relationship, though it may be hard. Hard but not complicated. So I shall not be in want, because the Lord is my shepherd and he alone is sufficient. And surely goodness and mercy will follow me. They are not hidden in boxes under the sand, they follow me where I go astray. God pursues the grumpy with goodness and mercy, one over one shoulder, one over the other. Remember as you walk today, this is the grace-full universe we live in. So God's house will be my home all my life, 23 to 24 and God's house is the earth, cake on the plate. But this poem full of the not-yet also, God is still coming, we are not complete, so prepare, prepare, for your unrealised pie, fling wide the gates, prepare a way in the desert, for all of life in an advent.

Ps25-6 v2 Trust vs Shame, v3 Waiting vs Shame, v20 Refuge vs Shame. Not sure that I am being terribly profound, simply to say we are safe inside a steadfast beloved unashamed shamelessness.. v7 Remember God's great forgettery. Tattoo it on a friend. .. v14 Friendship. We should image this mode of our relationship with God, against facebook's damage done, oh to be a friend, substantially, unambiguously. .. In that vein. v15 Pluck us from the net. .. 26v12 I'll link you to McCracken on Tebow. Shameless unirony. God, let me be so simply Christian in a single-minded pursuit of excellent witness. Psalms in the evening dredge the day's detritus, it is a different experience. God, forgive forget what I have been and done.

Ps27-28 These Psalms need to be read aloud, read them aloud to remind of our embodied dwelling in the house of God, words from your body to your mouth to spoken declaration. v4 There is one thing I want, to dwell in the house of God. Dwell dwell, with heart body mind soul strength, deeply. Dwell with every footstep and every word. v8 Hear God calling us to worship. Let us, let us settle into worshipful ways, dwelling in God's presence, here now, in all these tasks, transformed by templing. The Psalms connect worshipful delight in God, pleas for salvations and the pursuit of wisdom. From beginning to end 27v1 God my light and salvation, 28v9 the Lord is still my shepherd. We dwell in him.

Ps29-30 the bigger your notions of God, the more offensive Jesus' claim to be him. Our God is a great big God. Jesus was a nobody from a nowhere with nothing. Just like us. We have a great big God within us, among us, for us. This by his voice, which is our voice, if only we would. Let us with creative voices speak urgently his healing, proclaim boldly his kingship, and advocate justice, and imagine the possible, and speak a storm of hope, a flood of love and rebuild a word-damaged world:You are forgiven. It is finished. We are free. This our banner, these our bricks, this our medicine, these our roadmaps. O saints sing! Dear saint, beloved, believe in the blodd nought freedom you've been set free for.

Ps31-32 32v2 Blameless, 31v7 Beloved, this is for sharing, let all those we love stand under these banners. 31v12 the fear of being forgotten, as she of the end of Life In A Day, the pain of much church pain, the vulnerability of love. God in gathering today would we demonstrate that you, the God who forgets sins, does not forget anyone. Gather all near in unforgotten knowness, so for knowing, as we are fully known.

Ps33-34 v1 Befitting. It is right to give him thanks and praise. Right for him, right for us. This is our right (and our joy), it is what we deserve (apart from death wages) 34v1 and 1Th5v17 Continually. That irony might not get a word in edgeways. v3 Together. As FirstAidKit, as the Laurels, as those Life In A Day ladies hammering out the grain, let us live with polyphonic glee inviting all to join our chord, the welcome enclosure of notes between, and so expertly executed, and so deliberately together. 34v5 Radiance. Lit eyes. Where I have seen this in others, I have longed to know Christ their way. Turn us out, turn us on, lights to worlds, cities on hills. God, ablaze might we be, eyes affixed on you and hearts affirmed. Alight us, aflame us. Come Jesus, rescuer, rescue me.

Ps35-36 God fights for us. Protect us today, oh Lord, protect us together and apart, protect us from the evil that comes against us, & protect us from ourselves. Confessing that I am wicked, that I am 36v4 one who makes evil plans whilst lying in bed, I am prompted to pray in the morning for the day ahead, and in the evening for the night. Forgive me, & protect me from myself, for I am my own worst enemy. 35v2 God's armour, let us this morning consciously put on our Eph6v10-18 armour, to battle evil, to risk romance adventure journey, fight for all that is holy, & so be all we were made to be, knowing that truth drives our falsehood, righteousness destroys my own wickedness, readiness is quicker that complacency, faith proves itself strong, our salvation is the safety we live from, steep in God's words. That you God for your 36v5-12 constant goodness love righteousness justice care.

Ps37-38 Fret not. Lk2v10etc Fret not. Ph4v6 Fret not. Stealing a host of Piper's pictures of the unfretted Christian life, I would adjure us thus: be coronary Christians, (vs twitchy adrenal), and put ballast in your boat, place your feet on a concrete platform just beneath the waves, be sages, deep rooted oaks. Be chill. And know. .. I have this morning attempted a bridge between this fretting and last night's fleeing discussion. Bear with me. What flees? The healthy flee a plagued town, a dog flees the kicking of a cruel master, the lazy flee hard work, the naked flee sight, the anxious flee fright, escapists flee generally, and, I think, most usefully in this discussion, the hungry flee famine. I should like to establish this as an understanding of the Devil's flight. It is a flight from pain to pleasure along a path of least resistance. This is why we resist. We have something the Devil needs and we can withhold it. The devil, can we construct the devil as incomplete, an unstable isotope, a starving parasite? We have in Ps37 v19 and v25 the image of God's nutritious supply, and within this dynamic of sustenance, I will hop skip and a jump via Mt4v1-4 to our Jm 4v7b. Fretting not is trusting God is feeding on him is resisting the Devil is starving him is putting him to flight. Another way: either we can feed on God Jn6v35/53 and so feed his sheep Jn21v15/17 OR we can feed on our sick 2Pt2v22 and so be devoured by the Devil 1Pt5v8 (and each other Gal5v15). Resist the Devil, feed on God. And what is feeding on God? Doing his work Jn4v31. And what is his work? Mt16v24. Thus Christ's pièce de [peaceful] résistance is the cross. Let us. Fret not. With apologies for mixed metaphors.

Ps39-40 The conflictual emotions expressed throughout the Psalms (39v12 'come near me..leave alone.) Is not be celebrated so much as understood it. We are to know when to be silent, and 39v2 when not to. On the value of questions, complaints and honest expressions of emotion communicated rather than repressed and left to grow at the back of the mind, becoming bigger than they are. Rightly we are to critique an understanding of authenticity that is simply 'doing what I want' but this is not what this is, this is an articulation of feelings explicitly in the presence of God, to make sense of them, to seek God in them, with them, through them, & depsite them, intentionally. Forgive me thoughts repressed, God, teach me helpful communicative articulation of difficult and painful emotions before you. Let us be Jacobs wrestling and let us not romanticise this wrestling. Brought to mind Lauren Winner's description of her conversion as admitting that she'd been fighting with Jesus in the way that one fights with someone you love. Honest wrestling makes a way for 40v1-2 salvation, safety, singing. Yes yes let us sing together, let us sing together. These circling pleas and praises, a spiralling deeper into God. v6 God today, give us ears to hear you, whatever is specific to hearing your speaking spokenness, let us be attuned and attentive. I mean it, here I am, here we are.

Ps41 v1 Faith works and salvation by social action. There is no need to problematise this so. I need to be reminded that it is by positioning myself to serve the poor amongst the poor for the poor, there will I find blessing, and from the open handed, hands-out-of-pockets, heart abandoned position am I to receive blessing, unknown in another place or position. At some level serving is its own rewards, the joy of cooking, at some level serving creates a rewarding return, the investment in community, and at some level there needs to be a reward that comes as you give yourself to death, the reward that God will meet you there and you will never outgive him.v7 Whispering and imagining the worst. Let us rather, speak plainly and imagine the best best.