I’ve just been laboring through Psalm 119 in a dutiful kind of way. If you read the bible with some kind of lectionary or plan in hand you might find this long psalm kindly divided up so that you only face down a portion of it each day for many days. But if you’ve made some kind of rash vow, like, “I’ll do a psalm a day” when you land on 119 and maybe you’re running late, you might find your heart sink. Add in the extraordinary love of the psalmist for the Law of God, such a one that he repeats himself over and over, and you might grow weary and walk away. Don’t feel too bad, happens to everyone. What you do then is pick up and try again the next day, maybe breaking it up into digestible bits.
So there’s the length that might be difficult, and then there is also the subject matter. The Law. The psalmist makes it sound like a dream come true, like its worth obsessing over, like if he could just get a further deeper look at it his whole life would be better than riding on a unicorn.
Every time I read this psalm I am reminded of how little the majority of the verses are true for me. I mean, don’t judge me, I totally do love God’s law. But as the words and the affection for the law spirals in and out between sounding like psalmist gets there and then being frustrated that he clearly hasn’t gotten there, I take sideways glances at my own self and am not surprised to find lacking a similar kind of obsession. Oh, I mean, I’m definitely obsessed. Just not with God and the perfection of his law.
‘What kinda of things do I love?’ I like to ask myself as I’m reading. Besides myself? Because that’s a given. I love having things go my way. I like avoiding trouble and strife. I like not having any extra work. I like occasionally indulging myself, perhaps a little reward when I’ve done something I didn’t particularly want to do. I especially like it when my children leave me alone and I can just wander around the Internet in a daze. I really love having a perfectly clean house because that assuredly reflects my true nature into the world. The consideration of God’s holy and perfect law does not rank very high on the list of things that I think will make me happy.
Take this verse, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” Psalm 119:71
Followed by this one, “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.” Psalm 119:72
Not only is this counter cultural, it’s counter me, at my core. I like to run screaming away from affliction, and as nice as God’s law is, a few thousand silver and gold pieces sound like they might be just the thing.
But that is the point of the psalm, and the foolishness of the human condition. We love everything except the One whose way can produce real happiness. We want everything but to be obedient. We want everything but the truth. Because this is so, the psalm itself is a miracle. The fact that anyone said these words is incredible. The mercy of God to so draw even a single person to himself so that these words might be true for them, and in time for me, is a miracle of the first order, as remarkable as the mountains falling into the sea.
More also, he uses the very words of the psalm to effect that miracle. The more you read it, the more you glance at yourself and see the measure of its truth, the more you slowly find one or two flashes of affection, moments of light that pull and draw you closer and closer.
After a while of reading it you’ll find you wish it were true, instead of just being alarmed. And then a while after that, maybe lots of years later, you’ll discover that one of the verses practically happened in one situation or another. Your affections, your inclinations slowly shift and align with the words, with the Law, with the One who is there perfectly reflected. Of course, in the next moment you will probably ruin it again. But the stretches of obedience and love will begin to bear more weight than the burdening self centered disobedience.
Still, there will never be a unicorn. And there won’t really be happiness in the way that you thought you wanted it, or hoped for. Look how angsty the psalmist is in his obsession. That’s the end goal. If anything, you’ll become as weird and difficult as he is, roiling away about light and dark, life and death. Just as you recoil from the psalm, so others will recoil from you. Which is fine, but not a unicorn. But what use would a unicorn be anyway? Wouldn’t you rather end up in the presence of the One in whom there is no darkness at all? Who makes your steps sure? Who afflicts you so that you will forever be holy? If you’re still not sure, trudge back to the beginning and read it again. I swear, if works every time.
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