Minute rice, texting , instant messaging, cable on demand, drive through fast food, drive through pharmacies and the like are common place in our day and time. High speed Internet enables us to access information at an accelerated rate. Virtually everything that we need, or perhaps to put it more accurately, every thing that we want is at our fingertips.
It goes without saying that this understandably produces positive results that we derive benefits from in many differing ways and on many differing days. Conversely, though, these high speed & readily available dynamics have produced a culture that espouses an 'expectancy of immediacy' or a 'demand & supply' mentality.
I have been leading the local church that I help pastor through the first few chapters of the Psalter as part of our sermon series covering the Psalms. In so doing we have given consideration to this 'expectancy of immediacy' and this 'demand & supply' mentality that pervades our western culture in relation to suffering and distress due to the remaining presence of sin in this world. More, precisely we considered the effects that instantaneous expectations and immediate access such as these have upon our joy, hope & peace as we are experiencing suffering in its variegated forms.
It is all too easy to succumb to the result/s oriented culture or the micro-wave minded mentality that emerges from the aforementioned dynamics to such an extent that we perceive our suffering in much the same way. We approach suffering with expectations of immediate relief, if we expect to suffer at all. We handle our suffering by engorging ourselves with pharmaceuticals, placebo's and other supplements. We find outlets for our stress through exercise and comfort food. We handle days of lethargy with cups and cups of coffee or energy drinks and the like. So forth and so on. All of these examples are inherently immediate counter measures that we take to achieve relief from distress, comfort in the face of suffering, joy in throws of disappointment, and peace while enduring conflict.
Obviously, in and of themselves these things are not vices necessarily. I exercise and drink coffee. And, of course we should pop ibuprofen for a head ache. After all Paul advised Timothy to drink a little wine for a stomach ailment and James made reference to applying medicinal oil to the sick.
The salient point is that when we locate our joy, hope, peace and the like in such transient and external measures (as and when we are suffering) our joy, hope, peace and the like will be equally transient and external. Those are impermanent measures that produce fleeting and erratic results.
David throughout the Psalms undergoes re-occurring periods of suffering and distress. As will we. The question that we need to pose is, 'Where will we find our peace, joy and hope while enduring suffering?'. As for David you will find him locating his refuge, relief, peace, joy et cetera in his King and God throughout the Psalms. In Psalms 3-5 particularly David fled the comfort zone of his kingdom as his son Absalom (roughly translated 'peace') sought his life. Needless to say the King was experiencing a duration of suffering. Despite these most awry circumstances David writes:
1. "you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head...I lay down and slept; I awoke again, for the Lord sustained me...I will not be afraid..."(Psalm 3)
2. "You have given me relief when I was in distress...The Lord hears when I call to him...you (the Lord) have put more joy in my heart...In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for you, O Lord, make me lie down in safety" (Psalm 4)
3. "In the morning you hear my voice...I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house...let all who take refuge in you rejoice, let them ever sing for joy and spread your protection over them...you bless the righteous, O Lord: you cover him with favor as with a shield." (Psalm 5)
David found his joy, peace, hope, security and the like in his King and God. (Psalm 5:2) While he took counter measures with regard to his various forms of suffering (cf. the superscript of Psalm 3 notes that David fled from his threat) these things were not located in those measures. They were located in his King who sovereignly rules and governs over all things! Including his suffering and the cause/s of his sufferings!
What was true for King David is just as true for us. If not more so in Christ Jesus to whom we turn for our sustained hope, joy, peace, security and the like.
These expressions of grace are not produced like minute rice whereby we microwave our product in minutes and consume in minutes to satisfy our need while continuing along until the same need arises again necessitating the same impermanent measures that produce the same impermanent effects and so on. These expressions of grace, amid our intermittent sufferring/s, are permanently given by and found in Christ Jesus our Sovereign Lord and Saviour who alone can and will sustain our joy, peace and hope! He alone provides us with the constancy of grace as we experience occassional suffering/s. Unfading and unchanging graces that overwhelm the changing contours of our experience. Having joy when inclined to discontent...IN CHRIST ALONE! Having peace when conflict surrounds us...IN CHRIST ALONE! Having hope when prone to despair...IN CHRIST ALONE!
My prayer for Sovereign Grace church of Lagrange is that we will turn to Christ for our joy, peace, hope, security, confidence, encouragement, acceptance, assurance et al amid our varying forms of suffering/s instead of locating them in fleeting substitutes.
Psalmody in most discourse is more often than not considered exclusively in terms of liturgical forms, musical expression, congregational singing and the like. I will be the first to concede the appropriateness and relevance of this discourse. After all the Psalter is entitled 'Praises' according the Hebrew corpus. And of course this omnibus collection came to be recognized by the rabbis as the 'Book of Praises' which became a mainstay that more or less defined their worship, both the content of worship and the spirit of worship. (Ironically, most traditional, formal and/or liturgical practitioners fail miserably to practice or even acknowledge the latter when strictly incorporating psalms into their worship and in so doing misrepresent the Psalter). Oh yea, the superscripts of most Psalms substantiate that the compositions were later presented as musical praise. Paul even writes to the Ephesians and Colossians about 'singing to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs'.
All the evidence evinces this usage and consideration of psalms to be inarguably viable. However, it seems to me that another far more valuable use for the Psalms is being unwittingly truncated due to the fact that the meaning of the Psalms is so often {mis}interpreted as primarily liturgical as a result of the aforementioned emphases. It is quite possible that the more sublime meaning of the Psalms has precipitously escaped us by and large as a result.
The meaning of the Psalms is not to be found in the ebb and flow of singing the Psalms. Quite the contrary the overarching meaning of the Psalms is to be found in living the Psalms! Anybody can go through the liturgical mode of vocalizing and musically performing the Psalms while no psalmodic resonance is to be found within the reverberations of their 'living'. After all the Psalms were actually lived long before they were designated a template for liturgical forms of singing. Psalm singing should proceed out of Psalm living.
The profundity of the Psalter is to be understood in terms of living life coram deo; before God. The title 'Psalms' or 'Praises' is inextricably bound to the entirety of life represented by the anecdotal glimpses of 'living' found in the compositions of all the individual contributors. The Psalms are to be lived not merely sung or performed! We are to be living Psalms just as Asaph, the sons of Korah, David, Moses and the other authors of the Psalms were as they grappled with the full range of human experience. Our lives are to be Psalms of praise during anxiety, discontent, despair, ecstasy, victory and all other experiences of this life. While our experiences will vary His glory is constant.
We should turn to the Psalms so that our Lord, Jesus Christ can show and teach us, through the activity of His Holy Spirit, how to live lives of praise unto His glory. After all He is the truly blessed (or happy according to the Hebrew text) man of Psalm 1 who alone lived a psalmodic life that we should aspire to live ourselves and who alone can empower us by the inward work of that same life resonating within us to live because He has so rapturously lived it.
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