A Song of Satisfaction
Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days! Psalm 90:14, New King James Version
I was recently reviewing somebody's list of the best episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation. One of their choices was an encounter in which Captain Picard was dropped onto a strange planet with a representative of another species whose language he didn't understand. The other figure kept repeating a single mantra to Picard's frustration. Eventually, Picard figured out that the other being was orienting himself and trying to reach out in communication with his culture's basic storyline or metanarrative.
Psalm 90:14 has been my version of this lately. It's the standard I first fly on social media, communicating outwardly and inwardly that it is my desire to be satisfied in Christ and for that satisfaction to change me. Where disaffection is already evident, and it usually is by the time I hit the floor each morning, this has been my sermon to myself, and my plea to the Lord. If Moses, with all he saw and intimately experienced of the Lord, could plead for more, and more satisfaction in the character of God, so can I. This has been my recourse through the frustrations of an empty crib serving as its own symbol of a quest to remedy infertility in its tenth year.
Dropped on Planet Parenthood and attempting to orient myself and communicate to others, I still perseverate on Psalm 90:14. Christ is still, I plead, my satisfaction, though He blessed me with the most cherished evidences of my heart's desire. Even a child, I know from forbearers in the faith like Abraham, Hannah, and David, needs to be turned over in sweet surrender to the Lord to be his or her ultimate Parent. We, at last parents or as those tempted to be satisfied in some other gift rather than Christ as Giver, after that willing surrender, can watch Him use the gift, and even frustrations with it, or him, or her, to show us more of Himself.
Psalm 90:14, disciplining my affections, focuses my inner dialogue and its outward expression. Satisfied in Him, predicts Moses, our song will change. The words we rehearse within will go from bitter to sweet. Out of the fullness of that heart, rather than a heart of discontent and complaint, the mouth will speak, and sing. As parenthood will soon reinforce that songs are an easily encapsulated way to pass on what is important, the song we insist on in Him will sustain us when immediate human results do not. Frustrated in some aspect of parenthood, or any other aspect of Earthly existence, I revert back without pretense to my song. I might even, in sending it to myself, let it escape my lips as my truest testimony.
I last savor momentarily the prophetic aspects of Psalm 90:14. Not only does Moses cling to this aspect of God's character because it will transform him in the moment, Moses is confident that sluicing the glory of God as he insists God drop down more clues as to his character will gift Moses a different future. With this song bubbling up from constant regeneration in Christ, I'll have a constant refrain in the nursery at 2 AM, nursing bruises from the playground as a tangible mark of questionable judgment, and nursing a broken heart in adolescence that is a result of someone else's failure to adequately value the expression of His glory and His image God has given my wife and myself to value and protect. A song rooted in satisfaction in God is a theme that is just beginning and which, by God's grace will pass through little lips.
I was recently reviewing somebody's list of the best episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation. One of their choices was an encounter in which Captain Picard was dropped onto a strange planet with a representative of another species whose language he didn't understand. The other figure kept repeating a single mantra to Picard's frustration. Eventually, Picard figured out that the other being was orienting himself and trying to reach out in communication with his culture's basic storyline or metanarrative.
Psalm 90:14 has been my version of this lately. It's the standard I first fly on social media, communicating outwardly and inwardly that it is my desire to be satisfied in Christ and for that satisfaction to change me. Where disaffection is already evident, and it usually is by the time I hit the floor each morning, this has been my sermon to myself, and my plea to the Lord. If Moses, with all he saw and intimately experienced of the Lord, could plead for more, and more satisfaction in the character of God, so can I. This has been my recourse through the frustrations of an empty crib serving as its own symbol of a quest to remedy infertility in its tenth year.
Dropped on Planet Parenthood and attempting to orient myself and communicate to others, I still perseverate on Psalm 90:14. Christ is still, I plead, my satisfaction, though He blessed me with the most cherished evidences of my heart's desire. Even a child, I know from forbearers in the faith like Abraham, Hannah, and David, needs to be turned over in sweet surrender to the Lord to be his or her ultimate Parent. We, at last parents or as those tempted to be satisfied in some other gift rather than Christ as Giver, after that willing surrender, can watch Him use the gift, and even frustrations with it, or him, or her, to show us more of Himself.
Psalm 90:14, disciplining my affections, focuses my inner dialogue and its outward expression. Satisfied in Him, predicts Moses, our song will change. The words we rehearse within will go from bitter to sweet. Out of the fullness of that heart, rather than a heart of discontent and complaint, the mouth will speak, and sing. As parenthood will soon reinforce that songs are an easily encapsulated way to pass on what is important, the song we insist on in Him will sustain us when immediate human results do not. Frustrated in some aspect of parenthood, or any other aspect of Earthly existence, I revert back without pretense to my song. I might even, in sending it to myself, let it escape my lips as my truest testimony.
I last savor momentarily the prophetic aspects of Psalm 90:14. Not only does Moses cling to this aspect of God's character because it will transform him in the moment, Moses is confident that sluicing the glory of God as he insists God drop down more clues as to his character will gift Moses a different future. With this song bubbling up from constant regeneration in Christ, I'll have a constant refrain in the nursery at 2 AM, nursing bruises from the playground as a tangible mark of questionable judgment, and nursing a broken heart in adolescence that is a result of someone else's failure to adequately value the expression of His glory and His image God has given my wife and myself to value and protect. A song rooted in satisfaction in God is a theme that is just beginning and which, by God's grace will pass through little lips.
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