Outrage Outgrown
From Psalm 16 – 4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips. 5 O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. 6 the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.
Sheryl Sandberg wrote in Option B of her husband's unexpected death in middle age, "While grief would have to run its course, my beliefs and actions could shape how quickly I moved through the void and where I ended up."
The psalmist in that songbook's sixteenth chapter could identify with that future-focused resolve. He is grieved not by personal loss but by the indignity his God suffers as the humans made in His image pervert the religious instincts He placed within them. They hasten to other gods, he observes accurately. They drink offerings of blood and call them pleasing to God. He states fallenness as it is, but then he pivots in his thinking and his speech.
The psalmist's beliefs, to use Sandberg's phrase, move him through being appalled and shape where he ends up. Outrage can be its own narcotic, as citizens of the 21st century know all too well. Moving through an entirely justified Psalm 16:4 reaction to the verses thereafter is what can grant us a testimony distinct from the gripe parade. Almost overshadowing his indignation, real as it is, are his subsequent declarations.
God is, right then, his portion. So it is with us. His Presence right in a polluted land is so substantial that He is our sustenance today and will continue as our inheritance. As things, Newton says, go from a seed of order to a state of disorder, as a copy, of a copy, of a copy of something good, the organizational dynamic dictates, is a gray smudge, the great I AM maintains. As the general currents of what's wrong with the world are enough to start us on a rant and depress us, we have the alternative of focusing with the psalmist on God's particular goodness to us. The lines he has laid down have fallen to us in pleasant places.
Sheryl Sandberg wrote in Option B of her husband's unexpected death in middle age, "While grief would have to run its course, my beliefs and actions could shape how quickly I moved through the void and where I ended up."
The psalmist in that songbook's sixteenth chapter could identify with that future-focused resolve. He is grieved not by personal loss but by the indignity his God suffers as the humans made in His image pervert the religious instincts He placed within them. They hasten to other gods, he observes accurately. They drink offerings of blood and call them pleasing to God. He states fallenness as it is, but then he pivots in his thinking and his speech.
The psalmist's beliefs, to use Sandberg's phrase, move him through being appalled and shape where he ends up. Outrage can be its own narcotic, as citizens of the 21st century know all too well. Moving through an entirely justified Psalm 16:4 reaction to the verses thereafter is what can grant us a testimony distinct from the gripe parade. Almost overshadowing his indignation, real as it is, are his subsequent declarations.
God is, right then, his portion. So it is with us. His Presence right in a polluted land is so substantial that He is our sustenance today and will continue as our inheritance. As things, Newton says, go from a seed of order to a state of disorder, as a copy, of a copy, of a copy of something good, the organizational dynamic dictates, is a gray smudge, the great I AM maintains. As the general currents of what's wrong with the world are enough to start us on a rant and depress us, we have the alternative of focusing with the psalmist on God's particular goodness to us. The lines he has laid down have fallen to us in pleasant places.
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