A Better View

"I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Your precepts." Psalm 119:100, New King James Version

Benjamin Wallace-Wells considers in his article "Battle Scars" in the December 4, 2017 issue of the New Yorker that every time we enshrine monuments and collective memories, we run the risk of invigorating bitterness.

Psalm 119:100 is an effective remedy to the explosive politics he was addressing of venerating one memory over another. The verse's celebration of God's Presence in the present through His Word is an equally effective suppressant of any tendency to romanticize the past. It is easy, after the battles of previous generations have been fought and won, to see the heroism of participants in a straight line, and to believe that our own day suffers by comparison. This psalmist will have none of it.

He celebrates what CS Lewis's fictional demon dreads, the continuity between obedient saints in the current generation and those who have gone before us. From this, the demon recoils, that we would see ourselves as part of an army with banners. As we obey in today's choices because we keep God's precepts, we will understand more of Him. He will, He promises, draw near to us as we draw near to Him.

Better still, as Christians have been bequeathed the righteousness of Christ already, our vantage point is more breathtaking than this psalmist could have imagined. The precepts of the Word are already In Christ. Because His righteousness is ours, the Bible says the prophets have longed to see what we see, even if to our eyes the props around us look like the same telephones, computers, cars, and dishes that other humans use. Rather than looking back to some previous era, we can engage today with gratitude and power. We can celebrate the victories of THIS day as jewels incorporated into God's glorious, timeless mosaic.

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