You Wrote a Love Song for What?
Imagine if, on around April 15, while you were scrambling to finish your tax return, you ran across a friend who looked right at you and said, "I love the IRS." You'd think they were crazy. Then imagine if that same friend brought out a copy of a poem s/he had written titled "Ode to the Tax Code" - and insisted on reading all five pages of it to you. At that point, you would probably start becoming seriously concerned for your friend's mental well-being, right?
As absurd as that circumstance might be, it is rather close to what happens when one starts reading Psalm 119. It is a Psalm dedicated completely to the Law of God. For 172 verses (far and away the longest single chapter in the entire Bible), the psalm goes on and on about how wonderful God's laws are and how fun it is to meditate on them and so forth. It's almost enough to make you question the sanity of the author.
Yet there is something about the psalms unwavering dedication to obedience that is quite moving. Something about a no holds barred approach to God's commands seems attractive. Perhaps it is not the author of Psalm 119 who is crazy or who is going a little overboard or who is taking things too seriously. Perhaps I am not taking things seriously enough.
Pilgrimage Songs
In the latter part of the book, there is a whole group of psalms that fall under the heading, "Song(s) of Ascent." These were songs that the people would sing while they were on their annual trip to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices and celebrate feasts. I can only imagine how awesome it must have been to be a witness to the singing of these songs - thousands of Jews traveling toward Jerusalem, each family singing one of these songs, their voices mingling together in a joyous cacophany of praise and worship to the God who had rescued them from all kinds of disasters.
Maybe that's what Heaven is going to be like - millions of people singing "songs of ascent" in praise to Jesus.
A Fixed Law
I am generally loathe to enter into the evolution v. creation debate. It's not because I do not have an opinion (anyone who knows me knows that I have an opinion on everything, even if I know absolutely nothing about it). Neither is it because I am afraid to engage in debate. Mostly, I stay out of it because I think it is a largely unimportant issue that has become too divisive.
However, there are times when I find myself drawn into thought about the early days of the world. Whenever I read Psalm 148, I experience one of those times. Verses 5-6 say this:
"Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.
He set them in place forever and ever; he gave a decree that will never pass away."
I see those words and the former physics student in me smiles. I see in those words a confirmation that the natural order of things was ordained by God - that all the laws of physics and chemistry are a part of God's creation. As strange as it may sound, I see in Psalm 148 a song in praise of the laws of nature and the God who established them. It was not Newton that caused gravity to be, it was God. We can debate until we are blue in the face about how exactly God did it, but we can no longer throw out the sciences and discard the input of physics and chemistry and geology and so forth. God set things in place and gave a natural law that will never pass away, and we have to incorporate that natural law into our way of understanding both God and the world.
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