The Prod to Perfection in Perspective
From Psalm 8 – O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your Name it all the Earth, who have set Your glory above the heavens! 2 Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
From Proverbs 6 – 6 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, 7 which having no captain, overseer or ruler provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.
"Father," Tim Keller prays openly in his book on the wisdom literature centering on Proverbs God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "help me to use the gospel on myself to weaken the perfectionism that makes work a burden."
Keller provides a particularly apt entrée to a balanced approach on what's left undone. If we have lived any time at all, we have accumulated lists of such oppressive and intermittent apparitions that have haunted us for decades. Even a blessed pause in life's ongoing obligations can easily be dragooned as rueful reflection on what we haven't accomplished or become yet.
Keller's selections in his respective, apportioned marches through Psalms and Proverbs are brought to life to tame this particular tension. The psalmist's portion Keller highlight in Songs of Jesus begin that book's eighth chapter with the freedom to declare the excellence of the Lord's Name. His place as one made in the image of God, he knows and rejoices, is to declare that God's reputation is higher than the visible splendor of the stars.
I've never connected that deep, exhilarated breath in one's thought life with the next verse, until now. The psalmist's next inspired thought is that infants and nursing babes are strengthened by the reality of God's glory. They also are made in His image. Is the psalmist taking a random inventory of God's attributes or his own reasons to be grateful? This would be blessed, but I think he offers more continuity.
For, as soon as we begin to contemplate and vocalize the excellence of God's Name, we are especially aware that we, His marred image, are not altogether excellent as He deserves. The enemy of our souls pounces on this accurate assessment, and drags it downward.
Who are you, he hisses, to declare what is excellent? The last decade, or year, or week, or day, or hour He gave you has not been excellent. Work or chores are left undone. A comment has gone awry. God's excellence can quickly become a wistful memory amid the litany of our regrets.
Psalm 8:2 bids us agree with our adversary quickly, but not to stay in the trough with him. His reminders and accusations, framed properly, put us with Paul in that we had not arrived at spiritual maturity. We are, in some areas of our lives, but infants. What of it, then? Even that army of ankle-biters can show God's strength.
An understanding of this verse is is license, even command, to testify to God's greatness right where we are. The strength He gives us is His strength engaged at our very age. The strength He gives us is His strength engaged as He sees fit at our maturity level, at our proficiency professionally and in relationships. When our heart prompts, we can sound off. Now. Without stifling our praise because we don't uniformly live up to it.
Proverbs 6:6 is the portion from the same day in Keller's God's Wisdom For Navigating Life and I find there nutritional balance for the growing soul so much more important than vitamins and minerals from the body. Assured that we give a compelling testimony in the present, the enemy's next play is to keep us satisfied there. Proverbs 6:6 helps to distinguish between grateful contentment toward God and the stifling nature of measuring ourselves by ourselves.
Proverbs relieves such self-satisfaction with nature's wide-angle lens. Even the insects show us the need for discipline and preparation. As soon as we are free from the condemnation that we are not yet what we would like to become, the work of the Word and the Spirit is that we would express gratitude for new opportunities to grow in that direction.
If we are awakened from our unreflective revelry of telling ourselves we are already all that we would be, the author of Proverbs knows our next refuge, and would have us skip it. Jolted into action, we would seek solace in the approval of men. Considering the ant, his cadence offers, won't let stop there. Even the ant, he says, does her work for a bigger purpose than the approval of an overseer.
What, then? Surely Christ's own are not to freed from condemnation in order to be yoked again to a fear of want if the harvest is not adequate. Indeed not. The Son came in part as the Father's Emissary to remind us that He knows our needs and delights to provide for them. But there is a harvest at the End of Days which dwarfs the treadmill of work and paycheck in importance.
This day, we have the opportunity to declare God's praise not only between our doings, but IN our doings. As they are undertaken by faith because we know Christ is coming and His rewards are with him, because we would hear Him say that we have done well, we will be free of both apprehension and apathy. We will rejoice, in fact, with the writer of Psalm 119, in our progress past many of our human teachers.
From Proverbs 6 – 6 Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, 7 which having no captain, overseer or ruler provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.
"Father," Tim Keller prays openly in his book on the wisdom literature centering on Proverbs God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "help me to use the gospel on myself to weaken the perfectionism that makes work a burden."
Keller provides a particularly apt entrée to a balanced approach on what's left undone. If we have lived any time at all, we have accumulated lists of such oppressive and intermittent apparitions that have haunted us for decades. Even a blessed pause in life's ongoing obligations can easily be dragooned as rueful reflection on what we haven't accomplished or become yet.
Keller's selections in his respective, apportioned marches through Psalms and Proverbs are brought to life to tame this particular tension. The psalmist's portion Keller highlight in Songs of Jesus begin that book's eighth chapter with the freedom to declare the excellence of the Lord's Name. His place as one made in the image of God, he knows and rejoices, is to declare that God's reputation is higher than the visible splendor of the stars.
I've never connected that deep, exhilarated breath in one's thought life with the next verse, until now. The psalmist's next inspired thought is that infants and nursing babes are strengthened by the reality of God's glory. They also are made in His image. Is the psalmist taking a random inventory of God's attributes or his own reasons to be grateful? This would be blessed, but I think he offers more continuity.
For, as soon as we begin to contemplate and vocalize the excellence of God's Name, we are especially aware that we, His marred image, are not altogether excellent as He deserves. The enemy of our souls pounces on this accurate assessment, and drags it downward.
Who are you, he hisses, to declare what is excellent? The last decade, or year, or week, or day, or hour He gave you has not been excellent. Work or chores are left undone. A comment has gone awry. God's excellence can quickly become a wistful memory amid the litany of our regrets.
Psalm 8:2 bids us agree with our adversary quickly, but not to stay in the trough with him. His reminders and accusations, framed properly, put us with Paul in that we had not arrived at spiritual maturity. We are, in some areas of our lives, but infants. What of it, then? Even that army of ankle-biters can show God's strength.
An understanding of this verse is is license, even command, to testify to God's greatness right where we are. The strength He gives us is His strength engaged at our very age. The strength He gives us is His strength engaged as He sees fit at our maturity level, at our proficiency professionally and in relationships. When our heart prompts, we can sound off. Now. Without stifling our praise because we don't uniformly live up to it.
Proverbs 6:6 is the portion from the same day in Keller's God's Wisdom For Navigating Life and I find there nutritional balance for the growing soul so much more important than vitamins and minerals from the body. Assured that we give a compelling testimony in the present, the enemy's next play is to keep us satisfied there. Proverbs 6:6 helps to distinguish between grateful contentment toward God and the stifling nature of measuring ourselves by ourselves.
Proverbs relieves such self-satisfaction with nature's wide-angle lens. Even the insects show us the need for discipline and preparation. As soon as we are free from the condemnation that we are not yet what we would like to become, the work of the Word and the Spirit is that we would express gratitude for new opportunities to grow in that direction.
If we are awakened from our unreflective revelry of telling ourselves we are already all that we would be, the author of Proverbs knows our next refuge, and would have us skip it. Jolted into action, we would seek solace in the approval of men. Considering the ant, his cadence offers, won't let stop there. Even the ant, he says, does her work for a bigger purpose than the approval of an overseer.
What, then? Surely Christ's own are not to freed from condemnation in order to be yoked again to a fear of want if the harvest is not adequate. Indeed not. The Son came in part as the Father's Emissary to remind us that He knows our needs and delights to provide for them. But there is a harvest at the End of Days which dwarfs the treadmill of work and paycheck in importance.
This day, we have the opportunity to declare God's praise not only between our doings, but IN our doings. As they are undertaken by faith because we know Christ is coming and His rewards are with him, because we would hear Him say that we have done well, we will be free of both apprehension and apathy. We will rejoice, in fact, with the writer of Psalm 119, in our progress past many of our human teachers.
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