Psalm 103
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 1
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 21, 8:11 AM
If you have ever driven down a road at a good clip all your life, and then one day done the same stretch on foot, you have experienced the surprise of seeing things you never saw before in a familiar setting. Houses that were nondescript at 40 miles per hour suddenly reveal their charm. The homogenous blur of woods becomes the homey nooks and crannies of avian life, the foraging deer, the furtive fox.
I have never been a Scripture memorizer. But as I seem to have all the time in the world in the wee hours, I thought I would occupy it productively, and Psalm 103 looked to be a reasonable length. The Bible has been cracked open to that spot for many a night, and a neighbor happening to observe my bedroom window would be puzzled to see the fitful on-and-off of lights as I work my way through 22 verses.
Verse 1:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!”
I notice first of all that the psalmist is talking to himself. The whole psalm is, strictly speaking, a note to self—except for verses 20, 21, and 22a. Like the psalmist, I am learning the indispensability of self-talk. My fears talk to me all day, and so the truth must also. Someone once said, “What would you do to a friend who lied to you as often as your fears have?” Indeed.
I’m learning there are two kinds of counsel only in my head—the Spirit’s and the devil’s. The sphere of the “neutral” has shrunk to nonexistence for me. When James warns against “demonic” thinking, it’s interesting that in the context he is not referring to thoughts of murder or adultery but envy and selfishness. Everything tends God-ward or hell-ward.
I have become quicker at catching my little godless fantasies and rebuking them. I keep asking God to take every thought captive. It is my desire to be so filled with the Spirit that even my dreams and my spontaneous outbursts and my first reactions are spiritual. It is God’s Word itself that has emboldened me to seek in this direction.
Whether these verses are self-talk or Spirit-talk (it all becomes seamless when you’re filled with the Spirit), the psalm opens with a command: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” And it is evident by the psalmist’s tone that the command is joyful. Who says commands are burdensome? Anyone who has tried it knows that to take a half hour walk thanking God for everything you can think of brings you home in a much better state of mind than a half hour of your mind left to its usual devices.
And if you bless God out loud, all the better. This is what I think the psalmist has in mind. Public praise is better yet. There is something of a different order of magnitude about praise that makes its way from the heart up to the lips. The angels are encouraged and the demons tremble, not to mention the effect you have on men.
“All that is within me” is a delightful qualifier. I have sometimes wondered if my desires for God are fanatical, but this verse puts that fear to rest. Everything I must do I will do. “All that is within me” means I set no time limit on answers to prayer. If He has not answered, and I have only an ounce of strength left, I will go on with that ounce of strength. If it comes to the point where I don’t have even an ounce of strength, we’ll talk about it then.
“Bless his holy Name.” His Name is a mystery to me. All I know is that it is so fearfully potent that Peter invoked it to heal a lame man, and later when he was interrogated about it, he gave double emphasis to its power: “His Name, through faith in His Name, has made this man strong” (Acts 3:16). And somehow, “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).
To read “Verse 2,” click here.
To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 2
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 22, 8:12 AM
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits . . .”
At a wedding recently I met a woman whose husband spent the whole summer in nothing but repentance. She sensed that it was becoming morbid and said to him, “Will you stop repenting!” Repentance is a good thing and I do it all the time, but it is important for the soul’s health—it is chicken soup for the soul and strength for the body—to do a lot of rejoicing in God’s “benefits.”
“Benefits” is such an understated word for what God has done in my life—the Rube Goldberg orchestration of my conversion; the improbability of Him even wanting me after the evil child I was; the way He suffered through my first two decades of sham Christian life; the way He was planning, even during that period, the good things I now enjoy; the way He keeps this widow with modest abilities financially afloat; the way He has given me joy.
The Psalmist isn’t telling us not to forget God’s benefits because it’s impolite. He’s telling us not to forget God’s benefits because it’s deadly. After all, all we have to go on as our encouragement in this present day’s troubles is the record of God’s faithfulness in yesterday’s troubles. And not only our own yesterdays, but other people’s yesterdays (our own individual histories being so short a paper trail). That’s why fellowship is crucial (Hebrews 10:25; Malachi 3:16). You need to hear about the impossible things God has done in other Christians’ lives.
Pastor Bill Johnson of California made an absolute statement—that every time ancient Israel backslid it was because she had forgotten God’s miracles. Said Johnson, “Read Psalm 78 and see if you can reach any other conclusion.”
So I read it, and it is so. “The Ephraimites, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle” (78:9). Why? Because what use is a bow where there is no mindfulness of God’s past miracles? What courage do we have to tackle spiritual strongholds when we don’t remember what God did before or believe that He can do them in our day?
“Those who feared the Lord spoke with one another . . .” (Malachi 3:16). Wonder what they spoke. I bet they reminded each other of God’s benefits.
To read “Verse 3,” click here.
To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 3
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 23, 8:06 AM
“. . . who forgives all your iniquity and heals all your diseases . . .”
What do “iniquity” and “diseases” have in common? They are both out of place in the kingdom of God. Jesus came to do away with the one and the other (1 John 3:8). And in both cases, the process of “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is a process that begins now. “The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8). The invading power of the eschaton is pushing back against man’s sinful tendencies (1 John 3:9; 1 Peter 4:1-2) and pushing back against man’s hell-borne diseases (Malachi 4:2; Acts 9:34). We see the patches of green in the White Witch’s frozen realm, that increase in circumference still there is more green than ice.
I wonder, did the psalmist know that forgiveness of his sins and healing of his illnesses were granted by God not out of some general beneficence (although God identifies himself later in this psalm as “merciful and gracious”), but out of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus? Well, perhaps he did—years of animal sacrifices must have made some impact on the psyche. But surely I, on this side of Calvary, have no excuse for fuzzy thinking on this point: Both my soul’s healing and my body’s healing are provisions of the Atonement. Forgiveness of sins and removal of disease have redemptive grounds. Isaiah 53:4-5 prophesied it; Matthew 8:16-17 ratified it.
God is directly involved in his creation. He makes grass grow for the cattle (Psalm 104:14). Likewise, when my heat rash is healed or my headache goes away, God has done that too. It’s not as if there are some things in the universe that are “on automatic” and other things that are done by God’s immediate supernatural intervention.
We like to think this way: the healing of a paper cut on my finger—natural; the healing of my cancer—supernatural. God makes no such distinction; it’s all the same to him. Just as easy to heal a cancer as a cold. Just as easy to cure a cancer as to forgive sins (Mark 2:9). And when he has touched me to dissolve the cancer that is still just the smallest release of the vast store of power that he possesses. Like a father wrestling on the floor with his 3-year-old son, he is always holding back his full power lest he overwhelm us.
To read “Verse 4,” click here.
To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 4
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 24, 8:03 AM
“. . . who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy . . .”
Another translation of the verse has it: “Who redeems your life from destruction.” I used to think it was God who will destroy sinners. And of course Jesus does say we are to fear the one who can destroy body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28).
But I learned from Genesis 6:11-12 that God only destroys that which is already self-destroyed. In describing Noah’s times the Bible says, “Now the earth was corrupt,” and the Hebrew word for “corrupt” means “self-destroyed.” It is not so much that God annihilated the world of Noah because they were corrupt, as that the folks of that time had annihilated themselves—all God had to do was wipe them off the plate, as one would wipe off any food that had spoiled.
I know what it is to destroy oneself. As I look back, almost all the bad things that have happened to me have come about by my sin in one way or another. (I know that is not true of everyone.) This understanding enhances my appreciation for God’s “redeeming my life from the pit.” Mine was a pit of my making. I was self-destroyed when God met me; I was not a victim of circumstances.
Just feel God’s heart in this verse—the superfluousness of his love, the cup running over, the beautiful redundance and layering of “redeeming” and “steadfast love” and “mercy.” It is as if he strains his heavenly thesaurus to get us to understand how “in” we are with him. There was a film titled He’s Just Not That Into You. I didn’t see it but the title makes me sad. How wonderful that God is that into us.
“Redeem” means “to free from a lien by payment of an amount secured thereby.” I was picturing redemption transactions, the people who approach a debt-holder to purchase back a desired item by effecting an exchange. They hand over items and moneys—and are sorry enough to part with them—but then are able to turn around and walk out. But who ever heard of the man handing himself over to the debt-holder and not leaving? There was nothing else he could give that would suffice. “Thou hast prepared a body for me” (Hebrews 10:5).
“Steadfast love.” Who has ever experienced that? Actually, I do know something resembling it, someone whose love is (evidently) impossible to destroy, who does the seventy times seven with me. What a blessing we bequeath to one another when we behave like God, living as mini-incarnations of His love. For it reminds us of a greater steadfastness of which this earthly joy is just the millionth part.
To read “Verse 5,” click here.
To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 5
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 25, 7:54 AM
“. . . who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
We feasted on God’s “love” and “mercy” in verse 4, and now we are presented with his “goodness.” I realize that Hebrew poetry is noted for its parallelism and redundancy, and so there is an overlapping of attributes here. But I like to ponder God’s “goodness” as distinct from His “love” and “mercy,” the better to savor each peculiar flavor. This is what I do with the Galatians fruit of the Spirit too, though, of course, they are all but as the rays emanating from one Sun.
When God created the world, the operative word was “good.” After making every thing he had made, he surveyed his product and pronounced it “good.” Doing “good,” in distinction from, say, being “kind” or “merciful,” seems to have to do with concrete and tangible acts. Dorcas the seamstress “was full of good works and of charity” (Acts 9:36)
The New King James Version renders verse 5 “who satisfies your mouth with good things,” and this is indeed the most basic level of goodness: shelter and food; a beautiful home called planet Earth to live on, and daily bread to renew strength. Except for rare times of voluntary fasting, this widow and her children have never missed a meal. In the manner of Elijah’s widow, the jars of meal and oil have been replenished daily—and miraculously (if you knew my obtuseness with finances!).
The wonderful “eagle” in this verse who soars when satisfied with good things turns up again in Revelation12:14, again in connection with God’s daily nourishment that gives her strength to soar. Here we see the dark background of that dinner—the dragon in ambush, her flight to the wilderness. It’s just Psalm 23 again.
The other day I saw a bald eagle at Fort Washington State Park. The Humana volunteers on the observation deck with their fancy binoculars monitoring the early autumn skies said I was lucky. They were very excited, having expected to see only the turkey hawks that day. But there is was suddenly, soaring high above the hawks. Alone, majestic.
To read “Verse 6,” click here.
To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 6
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 28, 8:23 AM
“The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.”
I used to read such present-tense statements and automatically assign them an exclusively future meaning. And to be sure, full relief and vindication for God’s people will come only when Jesus returns (2 Thessalonians 1:7). But here in this veil of tears we who love Him experience a peace unknown to those outside of Christ—if, indeed, we embrace it in a moment by moment act of faith. The world doesn’t see this and considers us unfortunates. But “blessed are the poor” (Matthew 5:3) even now.
The ironic situation is summed up in the little diorama of the 23rd Psalm. The enemy encircles, but a zone of blessing and favor is carved out of the midst of it. This zone follows us everywhere, so that we lie down in green pastures and by still waters amidst the ruckus. (Jesus snoozed in a boat on a stormy sea.) Our Father flaunts his lavish grace toward us and taunts the Enemy by setting a banquet table of sumptuous delights in full view of the Evil one’s camp.
For justice seemingly deferred, there is the “at the proper time” factor (1 Peter 5:6): “Humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.” He specializes in great reversals, as Mary observed in the Spirit of prophecy we call the Magnificat. My cousin Louise used to sum up our choice in life this way: “You pay now, or you pay later.” That was a little crass, but not far from the Beatitudes: Blessed are those who weep now, for they will laugh later.
I find I never envy godless people or pity godly people because I’ve lived long enough to see the other shoe drop and God’s mysterious way that tends to turn even the worst dealt hand to glory. Even infidels have noticed this now and then. King Abimelech hurried to make a covenant with Abraham because he saw he lived a charmed life in some way: “God is with you in all that you do. Now therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me . . .” (Genesis 21:22, 23; 26:26-28).
The late J. Edwin Orr, an expert on the history of revivals, wrote in his book The Re-Study of Revival and Revivalism: “. . . the first community stirred [by the revival of 1857] in the States was that of Southern black slaves. . . .” The inspiring gospel singing that today wafts out of free churches in America was born in the “call and response” harmonies in Southern cotton fields of yore.
To read “Verse 7,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 7
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 29, 8:26 AM
“He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.”
I won’t let God go unless He blesses me on this one. I am dead earnest about knowing His ways; I pray it every day. It scares me to think of being on the wrong track in anything—of being in the wrong “way.” I want to know how He would handle this and that situation. I want to know which of His promises are for the “already” and which are for the “not yet.” I don’t want to get to heaven and find out I missed something He had for me because of unbelief or bad theology.
God made known his ways to Moses. Why? Well, He was pleased to, that’s the short answer. Also, we know that Moses was the most humble man alive (Numbers 12:3). God evidently smiled on that. Moses didn’t even defend himself against Aaron and Miriam’s outrageous charge. He did what Jesus did: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).
The other thing Moses did was to ask! He asked God point blank to show him His ways. Maybe there are lots of things we don’t have because we simply don’t ask. Moses said to the Lord: “Please show me your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight” (Exodus 33:13). And He did.
When Moses asked God to show him His “glory,” what God did was show him His ways. God could have answered with some metaphysical answer. He could also have answered by something totally self-referential—that He was “majestic” or “holy” or “wrathful” or “just”—and these would all be true. But instead He described His deepest self in reference to us: “goodness” and his “mercy” and “graciousness.” He said, this is who I am and this is my glory and this is my way.
God showed Moses other “ways,” too: He showed Moses that He can use timid people with a low self-image to do great things, the better to demonstrate that the power is from Him. He showed Moses that He calls out a people for himself and takes care of them. He showed Moses that He can pull signs and wonders out of his holy sleeve whenever he wants to. He showed Moses that He is no-nonsense with His enemies. He showed Moses that when you’re stuck between the Red Sea and a dust cloud of advancing enemy horses, that’s when life just gets interesting.
One important fact is that man cannot know God’s “ways” unless He is pleased to show us. God must initiate the relationship—and He does. He acts into history, and then He tells us what He meant by it: His deeds and His Word; His “general revelation” and His “special revelation,” as some call it.
Philosophers have tried to know God’s ways. They have drawn their circles and tried to catch God in them but have failed. Theologians who treat God like a school subject have missed Him, too. God will not be a specimen under glass. By His prerogative, God reveals Himself to special classes of people, like “servants” (Revelation 1:1) and “children” (Matthew 11:25-26) and the “pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8). Those people know that you get to know God’s ways by walking in what we already know of His ways. He just keeps showing us a little more (Philippians 3:15).
What a blessing God’s self-disclosure is. What a relief to not be operating in the dark or trying to appease an unknown or capricious god. We are horrified that the pagan nations burned their infants in the Valley of the Son of Hinnon (Jeremiah 7:31). But I suppose it would come to that if you have enough summers of drought and you’re shooting in the dark.
To read “Verse 8,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 8
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
September 30, 7:49 AM
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”
Like a kid who comes at his parent with the secret weapon of all secret weapons—“You SAID!”—so I come to God several times a day with this verse, my favorite verse of this Psalm. A better man would perhaps favor another of the 22 pericopes, one which is more about His glory, disinterestedly separate from any benefit to man.
But as I now scroll through the verses of Psalm 103, it is remarkable that there is no such verse here. Everywhere the attributes of God are considered in relationship to man and God’s benefits to man. How marvelously condescending is our God, that He should allow a song of praise about himself to be “contaminated,” as it were, by mentions of us in every single verse—like a series of photos of Buckingham Palace in which some cheeky tourist has managed to stick his head or a toe into every frame.
Amazingly, God describes His very essence in terms of His relationship to us. He is “merciful.” Surely there is no need of mercy within the Trinity, for the Father, Son, and Spirit never do anything condemnable that one should need to exercise mercy. He is “gracious,” “slow to anger.” These qualities of God are only necessary in connection with creatures needing graciousness and slowness to anger and steadfastness, lest they die.
This self-description of God is so important to Him that He restates it in other parts of the Bible so that we’ll “get” it. My favorite is in Jonah 4:2, because it is such a backhanded compliment from a ticked-off prophet who would be happier if just for once God were not such a loving and merciful and gracious God, not when it comes to the heathen, at least:
“I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live” (vv.2-3).
The mercy and graciousness of God also slice through any preconceived, hard-and-fast notions about what God can and cannot do in our New Testament age. He can do whatever He pleases. Therefore I will ask whatever I please, unhindered by man-made theologies that put God in a box. If my hair is falling out like mad (which it is), I will ask for him to arrest it. On what basis? Mercy. Graciousness. God will answer as He pleases. But there is no harm in asking, and no one will steal my hope. No one—no matter how fancy his theological proofs and paradigms—will hinder me from asking anything of a God who describes himself as the source of all “mercy” and “graciousness.”
To read “Verse 9,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 9
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 1, 7:52 AM
“He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.”
I grew up in a house where there may as well have been a verse over the mantel warning the opposite of verse 9: “Here we will always chide, and we will keep our anger forever.” I do not know what generation it began in, but the currency in our household was having “hand.” And the prerogative of the person who had hand was the grudge. The one-day grudge was the most fortunate. More typically doled out was the two- or three- or four-day grudge. The implacable silent treatment. It did not so much come to a stop finally as sputter out from an empty gas tank.
But God is not like the women in my family tree. He does not always chide, or delight to keep stoking his anger. And his anger is moved by repentance rather than enflamed by it. The anger of man is cruel (Proverbs 27:4) and lords it over its debtor. It is a tool of manipulation in the hand of the one who wields it. But God’s heart is such that he is unwilling that any should perish but that all should escape the wrath to come (2 Peter 3:9).
For many years I took up the worthless and destructive strategies handed down to me from my forefathers, the same strategies that did me so much harm. Such is the insanity of sin. But as the Apostle says, “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Peter 1:18). He tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger, and he models what he promises, with mercies that are new every morning.
King Manasseh was arguably the most wicked king in Israel’s long and unillustrious line of monarchs. He rebuilt altars to gods that had been torn down by better kings. He was into astrology. He erected images to pagan deities. He filled Jerusalem’s streets with innocent blood. He ignored the prophets. “Manasseh led [Israel] astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel” (2 Kings 21:9). And then when the king of Assyria finally dragged him away with hooks and chains, he repented—and God forgave him.
To read “Verse 10,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 10
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 2, 7:45 AM
“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.”
If I thought that God dealt with me according to what I deserve, I would never pray. There is nothing on the list of things I pray for that I deserve. I pray for my kids to turn out well and to be saved, even though they grew up in a sham of a Christian house. I pray for my daily bread, even though I blew off my youthful opportunities to learn a trade that would help me earn my bread. I pray for health, though I have been a poor steward of my body in the past.
Funny, as I read verse 10, it is not my original conversion in the 1970s that comes to mind. That was, of course, a wonderful thing. But in some ways it was even more wonderful to me when he saved me the second time, a couple of decades later. One could almost forgive a person who acted out of “ignorance” (1 Timothy 1:13), but with more light comes more responsibility, and I sinned in the light. There is a stern warning in Hebrews 6 for people like me who have “tasted the goodness of the word of God” (v.5) and have spurned it. It teaches that those who bear thorns are near to being cursed (v.8). And such was I.
And to think that during my Hebrews 6 rebellion days, my days of most inexcusable mutiny, He was already planning the good things that he later brought into my life, bursting all my paradigms. Now I see that grace is really grace. There is no explanation. We are left with the conundrum that God is good because He is good.
Romans 5 bends over backwards to convey this asymmetry of our sin and God’s goodness: If He loved us while we hated Him, what will He do for us now that we have something approaching love for Him?
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life” (Romans 5:10)
To read “Verse 11,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 11
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 5, 7:47 AM
“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.”
He gives us two things we cannot measure—the distance of heaven from earth and the tail-chasing distance of east from west (as we’ll talk about tomorrow)—to convey the idea of a mercy that is beyond our experience in other human relationships, a love that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Literally, the sky is the limit when it comes to God’s mercy. No request that is made from a good motive is outrageous. Let me not limit my prayers to what men say is possible.
But if God’s love is so big—and He is so earnest to communicate how big it is—why do I keep thinking I’m just about to get the boot? How can I insult Him so? Do I think so highly of myself as to imagine that I’m the only person on earth that the gospel isn’t going to work for? I’ve finally done it: I’ve finally committed a sin that’s more powerful than Jesus’ blood!
The Christians I admire most—and I know precious few of them—are those whom I can see are so confident of God’s undeserved love that they are not constantly revisiting their sin or crime, but they have moved on with their lives and have peace and joy. Oh, if the matter of their past comes up, they will not deny it, and will be the first to call it evil. But you will not suck them into a morbid dwelling on it.
I debated whether to mention the following example, but I have decided I will. If it be a scandal, it is God’s scandal, not mine—a scandal of grace. A Christian inmate I know mentioned to me another inmate who is locked-up across the hall from him and who attends the weekly worship. This man had raped a woman who was newly wed and who later committed suicide. Maybe you wouldn’t save him, and maybe I wouldn’t. But the love that is higher than the heavens is above the earth and farther than east is from west was pleased to give him the gift of eternal life. And at the prison services he plays his keyboard to the Lord with joy.
To read “Verse 12,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 12
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 6, 7:39 AM
“. . . as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
How far is east from west? About as far as yes is from no, I suppose, or guilty from innocent. Or as far as future is from past. They can give each other a good chase, but they will never catch each other.
If you were trying to encourage a fearful soul to understand that he is forgiven, if you were dealing with someone given to serial relapses into self-incrimination, what would you say to him? God bends over backwards; He multiplies metaphors till one of them works for you: Your sin is so forgiven that only if the east could become west would you become unforgiven.
Don’t like that one? Then how about this: Your sin is so forgiven that it is like the goat whose head the high priest Aaron laid both his hands on it and confessed over it everything he could think of, transmitting all the vileness of his person and his people onto the animal. And then he took the sin-ridden beast to another man, who led it into the wilderness, never to return (Leviticus 16:20-28).
That one doesn’t do it for you, either? Try this: Your sin is like the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies (don’t picture your mother’s drapes but more like an iron curtain) that was ripped clean from top to bottom in the hour that Jesus, the archetypal scapegoat, took on our sins (Mark 15:38).
Or if it helps, picture yourself standing before God, covered in human excrement (that’s the actual word in Zechariah 3), with Satan accusing you—and making a very good case. And the Angel of the Lord rebukes Satan instead of you and calls for the filthy garments to be taken away and brand new, pure garments put on you.
Can you dare to live as a forgiven person? Will you not take sides with God’s evaluation of yourself over your own self-evaluation? Would it be humility or treachery to continue to whine about your guilt? “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? . . .” (Hebrews 2:3).
To read “Verse 13,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 13
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 7, 7:49 AM
“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.”
Ah, finally, the mention of “father”! Security. Unconditional love. The father looks down at his child and sees his own image, sees what he will become rather than the unpromising scamp he is now. The father loves even the runt of the litter, the one everyone else in town raises eyebrows at.
An important clarification: Fatherness is not a metaphor. It is not as if God, as an afterthought, cast about for a convenient analogy to communicate approximately his heart toward us and was fortunate enough to stumble upon this crude human adumbration we call the parent-child relationship and said to himself, “This will do.”
The way it happened is that Fatherness and Sonness is of the basic fabric of reality. Before there was anything else, there was a Father and Son (with the Spirit, of course). When it came time to create the universe, God fashioned us after himself. He is the Archetype; we are the copies. That truth gives me permission to mine all I want from this “metaphor” and never exhaust it. Does a father show partiality to his child over other children? You bet. Jesus said to Peter: “. . . ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tax? From their sons or from others?’ And when he said, ‘From others,’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the sons are free’” (Matthew 17:25-26).
When a child acts in disappointing ways, the father’s disappointment is swallowed up in hope; he sees the future. The father expects imperfection right off the bat. As C.S. Lewis’ demon Screwtape noted, with chagrin, “If only the will to walk is there He is pleased with their little stumbles.” God’s fatherly love creates a safe environment in which to fail, where failure is never grounds for divorce, and where shortcomings are dealt with in a personal, not one-size-fits-all way.
When I think of my sin abstracted from the understanding of my sonship, I’m afraid of God’s wrath. But when I come to my senses and remember who I am and who He is, fear flees away. The realization immediately recasts my sin in a whole other category. Verse 12 depicted a forensic relationship; verse 13, a familial one. Even unbelievers have a saying, “You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives.” Likewise, God is “stuck” with me—but he chose me, too. And I’m “stuck” with him, for the long haul.
To read “Verse 14,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 14
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 8, 7:41 AM
“For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
At breakfast today I learned about porcelain from my British neighbor, whose father is passionate about the stuff. Porcelain, also knows as “china” after the country that originally produced it, is made of a clay mineral called “kaolinite,” and I wonder how the first person discovered that it could be fired into something with qualities of translucence, low permeability, hardness, and beauty. Other elements in a porcelain product may include bone ash, feldspar, quartz, alabaster, petuntse, steatite, and other things I’ve never heard of, let alone used.
God has heard of and used them all. And if Fiona’s father “remembers” what goes into the making of a porcelain dish, then God “remembers” what went into the making of us—“he remembers that we are dust.” That’s a relief to me. He did not fashion us and then launch into some other project and absentmindedly forget our heat and cold tolerances and “fatigue life,” so that he put us under too much stress.
In freshman year of high school we were all scared kittens. When we became sophomores, it’s amazing how we forgot how bad it is to be scared and persecuted by upper classmen. God doesn’t forget.
Not long ago a football coach commanded sprints in 94 degree heat, with no drinking water, and a young man tragically died. That kind of miscalculation wouldn’t happen with God because “he knows our frame” and exactly how high to turn up the heat to get the effect He wants. (Porcelain, by the way, happens to be highly resistant to thermal shock.)
Sometimes the heat is turned up pretty high, but God is always at the controls:
“For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance” (Psalm 66:10-12).
Sometimes he is pleased to ignore his own stress predictions manual and allows the application of external or internal pressures that exceed normal tolerance levels. That’s when the Potter is most glorious, when by the uncommon intervention of his own Spirit, he causes his vessel to endure beyond all natural ability. Where our ability ends, His begins (2 Corinthians 1:9).
But God also knows us inside and out because he became one of us. Entering into the object you made, that’s what I call “knowing”! When the principalities and powers pan the faces of the congregation of God as they stand together with uplifted hands of praise, there is Jesus’ face in the midst of the crowd, locking arms, unashamed to call them brothers (Hebrews 2:11-12), able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). I don’t need to explain much: He was so exhausted He fell asleep in the bowels of a boat.
Sometimes I play the “dust” card with God. When I feel I can take no more heat, I say, “Lord, remember that I’m just dust.” It feels good to remind Him, not that He has forgotten for a minute.
To read “Verse 15,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 15
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 9, 8:16 AM
“As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field . . .”
I was 16 when I saw Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and it marked me. I remember the opening scene at Capulet’s party when the minstrel enthralled onlookers with his stringed instrument while Romeo and Juliet were falling in love across the crowded room. His tune, if we could have but peered into the future, formed the dark backdrop and prophetic utterance of the drama to unfold:
What is a youth? Impetuous fire.
What is a maid? Ice and desire.
The world wags on.
A rose will bloom, it then will fade.
So does a youth, so does the fairest maid.
Be it by hellish potion, suddenly and untimely, or by the soft landing of old age, the grave will reclaim its dust. What does it matter, the octogenarian is no different from the teenager in the end.
In the movie Il Postino, a man is insufferably in love with the untouchable town beauty. His street philosopher friend casts off the comment that in 50 years she will look like everybody else. That’s one way of handling unappeasable longing. For myself, I always feel sad when beautiful women grow old, when “the bloom is off the rose,” as the cliché so aptly puts it. I wish Elizabeth Taylor could look like Elizabeth Taylor forever.
The first New Yorker cartoon I ever saw, before I was 8 years old, depicted an aging man on his second story balcony, observing lovers below walking hand in hand and muttering to himself something like, “I too was in love. But I still got arthritis.” The cartoon affected me in some way that I could not articulate at the time.
Scripture’s philosophy avoids the opposite responses of hedonism and stoicism:
“Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9).
I am too sad to comment more on this verse.
To read “Verse 16,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 16
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 12, 7:52 AM
“. . . for the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.”
My grandfather build a large farmhouse around 1920, on a site with two great barns and many acres, and by good providence I grew up across the street. I passed many of my important milestones there. There I learned about friendship, and there I learned about the ends of friendship, and there, too, about the birds and bees. I formed my earliest sense of eternity there. I put my confidence in the very wooden beams and A-framed structures themselves, that they would endure. Now everything has been removed. My mother said it took the wrecking ball two hours to take down the house.
I have several times been back to see the spot, which does me no particular good. I have stood purposely with my back to the place and half expected that when I turned around again, the house and barns and spring water shed and pond would be standing there as before. And with it, my childhood faith in the permanence of things.
Today a graduated living facility occupies the space. The most obscene thing to me is that people coming and going in the parking lot that stands where our pine grove and mud pie-making operation were have no idea who my grandfather was or of anything we did there. For the most appalling thing about the brief agitation of man on the earth is that when he is gone his place remembers him no more.
“There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after” (Ecclesiastes 1:11).
Let a wise man learn what is to be learned from this bitterness.
To read “Verse 17,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 17
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 13, 7:47 AM
“But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, . . .”
A verse just in time, if ever there was one! (See how He is already being considerate of my frame and my dust.) After the doldrums of flowers gone with the wind, and houses that remember us not, He lifts our sights to that which is the deepest cry of our heart—something that lasts. “He has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). I got a letter from an inmate who described the struggle preceding his conversion: “I never found true happiness—no not in many different drugs, drinks, sex; nothing could stay long enough.”
That’s the trouble. If only something stayed. I would settle for even lesser things—a happy marriage, a great body, a satisfying job—if only they stayed. But the impermanence of everything under the sun conspires to bring us kicking and screaming to Permanence Himself. “All that I desire is in you.” A favorite Scripture:
“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).
That has already begun in my life. And physical death will be only a transition place to more dwelling with him, gazing on him, inquiring of him.
Let me linger on the word “steadfast,” as on a fine wine. “Steadfast”: “firmly fixed in place: immovable; not subject to change” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary). Who has ever known that kind of thing here? The best of us is so iffy. If you want to see steadfast, do yourself a favor and rent the film The Kite Runner. But that was a movie, right? I remember an old interview with Michael Landon, who played the world’s best father and husband in the 1970s television series Little House on the Prairie. He commented to the interviewer that he wished he could be the man in real life that he was in that series.
I have sometimes mischievously entertained the theory that I could lose any of my friendships, even those of decades’ duration, in an instant, with about three or four choice words. I hope I am wrong.
But while everyone on earth has a limit, and most limits are short, I need to hail my friend Kyung. She invited me out to a Japanese restaurant, and on the appointed day I forgot to come. She called me from the rendezvous place and I apologized, and we rescheduled—same restaurant. This time I jotted it on my calendar. (But I have often learned that writing appointments on calendars only works if you consult the calendar daily.) You have guessed the rest already. I was a no-show for sushi again. Again Kyung called me, all dressed up and sitting alone at the restaurant. Again I apologized, this time more profusely.
At this point a normal person would have ended the friendship, right? And would have had good cause, too: This “friend” of mine obviously does not really care about me, she would have said. Know what Kyung did? She decided that we had better forget the Japanese place and just eat at her house.
That’s the millionth part of God’s steadfast love for me.
To read “Verse 18,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 18
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 14, 7:42 AM
“. . . to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.”
Keeping covenant is increasingly a foreign concept in America. The closest we had to it was perhaps marriage. That was in the old days when “for better or for worst” meant it.
God has kept his covenant with me—mostly “for worst.” I alluded in an earlier blog post to my decades of highhanded rebellion. It is interesting to observe the way a God in covenant handles that kind of thing. One never gets off scot-free, in the sense of feeling no painful repercussions; they are exquisitely painful. But God is expert in weaving chastisement with blessing seamlessly. And then you minister out of your scars, and it’s all good.
I like the way my New King James Version phrases the last part of the verse: “who remember His commandments to do them.” It’s one thing to remember God’s commandments, another thing to actually do them. I think we’ve all got the “remember” part more or less down pat: Love your enemy; forgive 70 times seven, do not grumble, do not be anxious. And I have a bad feeling that some of us are going to be awfully surprised some day that we confused the “remembering” part with the “doing” part. As my brother Marc likes to say, “When all is said and done, more will have been said than done.”
Some of us late bloomers have also come to see that when we have actually tried to start seriously “doing” the commandments, they’re not bad at all. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant by His yoke being easy and his commands not burdensome. As a matter of fact, to begin to venture out into the virgin territory of moment-by-moment obedience is to soon discover that the commandments are doorways to joy. Yes, what we have been avoiding doing all our lives turns out to be the way to our own joy.
And then we reread the Psalmist’s exclamation, “Oh, how I love your law!” And suddenly we don’t think he’s a weird ancient Hebrew “enthusiast” anymore.
To read “Verse 19,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 19
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 15, 8:16 AM
“The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.”
If the verses about God’s unfailing mercies are the ones I am most grateful for, this verse about His kingdom rule is the one that keeps me up nights. I would like to know more precisely what is meant in saying that His throne is established and His kingdom rules over all. Sounds like present tense to me. Sounds like His throne is established now and his kingdom rules over all now.
This isn’t a prattling over the number of angels on the head of a pin but of the most practical importance—if you consider knowing God’s will and ways of practical importance, which I do. If presently “his kingdom rules over all” in the most expansive sense, then we are to expect much power available and great strides in this post-Resurrection age, in the defeat of Satan and the undoing of his various maniacal works. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).
I see around me two divergent Christian opinions regarding “the Lord has established his throne in the heavens” and “his kingdom rules over all.” Both views acknowledge that Satan is still indefatigably “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30). There’s no dispute there. But the view I am drawn to these days—for both Scripture and testimonial reasons—is that we who have the weapons of the Spirit available to us for the asking are to pick up these weapons and beat back hell’s gates. The gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church (Matthew 16:18). But the Church has to know that or it will be a Church of low expectations.
To put it another way, when we pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” are we asking for something far away and long from now? Or are we asking to see in our time things banished on earth that have no place in heaven? Are we asking for healings and miracles and the riddance of all the ways that the devil has spoiled the creation?
“His kingdom rules over all.” Agreed. Can we expect that in any widespread way “already”? Or “not yet”?
To read “Verse 20,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 20
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 16, 8:09 AM
“Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!”
Ah, angels! Good to know they’re there. I have come full circle toward the end of my life. When I was a child I was told and believed I had a “guardian angel.” Then I grew up and no longer believed. Now I am back to believing I have angels assigned to me. Try to read the Bible and come to any other conclusion; they are everywhere. Hebrews calls them “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (1:14). That would be me.
Still, it would be a fairly useless doctrine if there were nothing I could do about angels, or for angels. But I see now that we are in relationship, and that we human believers in God actually have some responsibility toward angels. They need us to learn how God’s plan is unfolding (Ephesians 3:10); they are our partners in service and worship (Revelation 19:10); they can be edified or scandalized by us (1 Corinthians 11:10).
And we learn from them what prompt and joyful obedience looks like, with no whining or grumbling. When God tells us to “rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16), we have a model in angels, who are depicted as always praising and never glum. When God tells us to be humble (Ephesians 4:2), we have a model in angels who, though mightier than we, stoop to serve us. When God tells us to entrust ourselves to him rather than retaliate (1 Peter 2:23; 3:9), we have a model in angels:
“But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’” (Jude 9).
Pastor Bill Johnson of Redding, Calif., says: “It is foolish to worship angels; it is equally foolish to ignore them.”
To read “Verse 21,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 21
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 19, 8:09 AM
“Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will!”
The circle of praise now expands, as the Psalm soars to a crescendo. In verse 18, we saw the human orienting his life and worship around God. Then it was the angels in verse 20, and now it is “all his hosts.” The camera pulls back to reveal the panorama. In verses 15 and 16 I was sad to see the end of man’s small ambitions. But a fairer view is now shown. The meaning of man is rescued, as it is situated in the grand plan of history.
Every character who has ever strutted across the stage now makes his final entrance on it, some to eternal life and others to eternal un-life. At the center of the scene is the throne room, the control tower of the universe, the beginning and the end of all things, the Alpha and Omega. It was always so, even when as a brute beast I didn’t know it. The angels have been in the know, and the “hosts,” and someday every knee will bow and “thy kingdom come thy will be done” will no longer be an operative prayer. All longing will be fulfillment.
God is “the Lord of hosts” (Psalm 46). He is a military man, with armies flanking him and captives in tow. And I am one of his happy captives. “You gotta serve somebody,” Dylan sang. Let the time that is past suffice for my hard service to the hater of my soul, who lied to me about everything and then chortled when his ways brought me disaster. But “whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin” (1 Peter 4:1), glory to God! Let me no longer be put to shame by any old angel or host. Let me also be one of his “ministers, who do his will.”
To read “Verse 22,” click here.
An insomniac’s Psalm 103: Verse 22
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Written by ANDRÉE SEU
October 20, 8:12 AM
“Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion.”
“All his works” will include all the exciting things you saw God do—the conversions of impossible people, the suitcases of smuggled Bibles that made their way past the Communist checkpoints to a people thirsty for salvation.
But it will also include the works you thought went horribly wrong—all the suffering you had that seemed to no purpose, all the prayers that seemed unanswered. The wisdom of the Tapestry Maker in that day will take your breath away.
In 2 Corinthians 12:11 Paul does something distasteful to himself by listing his good works to an unfriendly Corinthian audience, in order to establish his credentials for the sake of the gospel, saying: “You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you.”
We creatures likewise ought to commend God’s works to one another, but if we do not—and since, because of our finite minds, even the best of us are inadequate—God does not find it a bit distasteful to boast about his own works:
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?” (Job 38:22-27).
In the midst of a festive parade in Jesus’ honor, the Pharisees took umbrage and rebuked the Lord. He replied: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40).
“Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
After this glorious heavenly sight of angels and hosts and the beasts and the inanimate world all praising and blessing the Lord—of “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Corinthians 12:4)—the psalmist again finds himself alone in his room, as do I.
It is my soul that God has been after on this sleepless bed. For the King who cares for the teeming Hosts cares even for me. The great final scene will have to tarry a while, till every last soul who would join this joyous throng is brought in.
“And the Lord answered me, ‘Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:2-3).
In the meantime, “Bless the Lord, O my soul. Let all that is within me bless his holy Name.”