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.
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