Meditation: Psalm Twenty-Three and the Great Lacking

“The Lord is my Shepard. I lack nothing.”

So says the NIV translation. I love this terse translation of the first verse. There’s a ring of defiance in it. A resistance to evil. What powerful words they are when we feel crippled by a deep sense of inadequacy, or what we could call ‘The Great Lacking.’ We experience the Great Lacking when we feel there’s something missing, some mysterious quality or virtue that other people have acquired, and that we lack. It’s when the voice of the enemy diminishes us, or shames us, and we fail to live into the fullness of God’s love and grace.   

In popular culture dogma we’re also taught that there’s nothing we lack, because we’re inherently so special. Yet, the psalmist is more daring than culture’s adulation of self. The psalmist testifies to a God who is the source of our strength. It is because of God’s outpouring of mercy and love that we lack nothing. 

We lack nothing because the source of all goodness and love and power has called us into being from the beginning of time, and guides us, even when we walk through the darkest valleys. God anoints our heads with oil, and our cup overflows in the holy celebration of life in all its purity and sacredness.  

Meditation on Psalm Four: The Roominess of God

Twisted sheets from a night of tormented sleep. Restless nights stewing over problems we can’t control- health problems, financial problems, resentments that burn in our hearts and minds. We lie half awake and half asleep in a highly charged semi-consciousness dream state, haunted by anxiety. We ask ourselves on such nights, ‘What do I need to do?’ And when we can’t figure that out we cry to God, ‘Do something!’

The psalmist, I think, can relate to these nights. He doesn’t mince words, ‘Answer me when I call, O God of my right! You gave me room when I was in distress.’ I like the phrase, ‘You gave me room.’ The realm of God is broad and roomy, not stifling and rigid. A comfortable room with big open windows and a high ceiling, rather than a stuffy attic. God gives us breathing room. God gives us the distance we need when we feel the heat of distress, yet is close enough to hear our anguished prayers. The roominess of God allows the psalmist to say, “When you are disturbed, do not sin. Ponder it on your beds, and be silent.” Don’t fight, don’t fret, don’t fear- just be silent.

The roominess of God creates the space we need for trust, and even creates the trust itself. Left to our own ways, we wrack our brain with frantic thoughts that whirl in a loop. We trust in our own abilities to solve problems, and in spite of our best efforts to protect ourselves, we end up more insecure, fearful, and vulnerable. Yet the psalmist testifies to a God who hears our prayers, and who puts gladness in our hearts when we cannot. It is trust in this God’s care that allows us to sleep in peace. It turns our heated pleas of ‘What should I do?’ into the spacious assurance of gladness, safety, and rest. 

Meditation: Belief, Doubt, and MRI Brain Scans

The elegance of the human brain,
with its billons of cells,
and complex networks.
Its marvelous connections.

Pretty colors glow against
the black backdrop of an MRI scan.
Red is where emotions are located.
Blue is where language is formed.
We even see a ‘God region’ of the brain.
Is there a doubt region?
What color is it?

No matter.
They haven’t yet discovered the colors
that would illuminate the brain
fully alive in revelation.
It would break the machine.

When we touch your nail pierced hands,
we touch our own failure.
But our failure is yours.
It finds home in your pierced hands and side,
and is transformed in broken glory.

Stop trying so hard to believe.
You can't make it happen.
Step out of your stuffy locked room,
and breathe in the fullness of resurrected life.

Jesus our brother in grief

When we slap each other’s back in pleasure
When we flatter one another
When we ‘like’ this or that on Facebook
Or say something clever

We then turn and see you,
On the cross,
And sober up for a moment

You gaze through layers of pretense
You see us as we really are
And by some miracle,
Jesus our brother in grief,
You recognize us as your own