It's just a collection of vapor. We call it rain - sometimes a storm. But it's just a gathering of steam, an unquestioning retreat of moisture. Each molecule has its part to play in an unending dance. I wish I could be so light and be unswervingly obedient. Psalm 148
I saunter up to reception, pushing past the smaller guests. "One table, please." It's an order that I've framed as a request. It's absurd because I'm supposed to be taking orders and waiting tables today - not here acting like a customer. How did I get exclusive rights to God's favor? Is it my affiliations that got him to side so heavily with me? Do I have the lion's share of blessings, or do I have the Lion of Judah as my mediator and counsel? Do I hope in his benefits or benefit from his hope? Psalm 147
The golden creek bed waves to me. I scale the asphalt runoff to find the water teeming with playful creatures and pebbles. I sense the opportunity to build a great pool for them. I dam up the stream just before the culvert. The upstream swells. Now fish are darting in the flood. Crayfish and salamanders dance. But I have no thoughts for those downstream - as I choke them dry. Psalm 146
Sometimes I sit in The Church of Nothingood and let the choir soak my spirit in terrible lies. It's a splendid mess of modern dissonant, voices - sent to tell me how to breathe and live out loud. But I have a friend with a firm hand, who wounds me when I won't leave and loves me more than the people on the program - still singing false. Psalm 141
Whose jobs are they coming for anyway? I was under the impression that jobs (good and bad) came from the Provider. You think they're the pestilential ones? What if "the wicked" were closer to home? What if you found them on your speed-dial, on your Sunday School roster or voting record? Or what if you were wicked, unwittingly but complicit still in God's least favorite injustices - the dreadful things that rile his soul with rage and send his feet to the tribunal? The only rescue is the Righteous One who is enthroned to out-grace us all. Though He is also enthroned for justice, which overturns, providing glory. Psalm 140
It can be terrifying, when someone knows what you're thinking. A judging look casts shadows on your conscientious, sunbathed emotions: unspoken, sheer in the unwanted backlighting. But there is a grace that fills when it finds character bankrupt. Psalm 139
I am not lowly when I leverage privilege to shout or whine at the tax rate on my shiny, selfish things. I am not lowly when I bemoan loss of newness or bristle at friends when they succeed where I have failed. God still sees me, but graciously invites me down. Psalm 138
The guilty party goes unpunished, and it feels like justice is an arcade token, limited by trade and arrangement: "Win or lose, but don't expect power." But maybe Power waits for the fruit of repentance to grow in powerfully cold hearts. Psalm 137
As I take delight in history I'm so often the ignorant page - marked by happenings but never moved. What if I should be upturned instead of delivered? What if I should be torn down to be built into a mold that resembles nothing of my plans, nothing of my dreams of victory, nothing but a beaten Nazarene. Psalm 136
If God delights in me, even a little, why shouldn't I delight in grace more than in self-congratulation? What if God's little delight is infinite? Shouldn't grace best me? ... But I wander to the snow fields of self-care and wallow in the cold ice-blanket alone. I will delight in me. I will satisfy grief and the longing for oneness and justice. But grace stands above me, a distant, present mass of glorious flame that warms regardless of my bitter self-love. The gravity draws like a salt cure and leads me to the threshold. I hear singing... Psalm 135
