Internal calm

I read Psalm 25 for my meditation this Monday morning, the start of another week marred by rising oil prices and, on a personal note, illnesses that hit close to home: two of my distant aunties have been diagnosed with terminal cancers. A friend's father has died because of a progressively worsening malignancy. 

Verse 4 reads, "Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths." David prayed that God would move in his heart so that he would yearn to know God's ways, His paths. The poem's imagery alludes to a journey: there's a beginning and end to it. The beginning is the call to follow the way and leave all worldly cares behind; the end is God Himself. I suppose the words "ways" and "paths" must mean something else, as well: a pattern of living based on God's precepts and commands that God's chosen children are called to live by.  The Christian journey is a pilgrimage towards hills and valleys, with pain, sorrow, and joy intermingled. But the Christian does not walk alone; God empowers him. On his own, he will inevitably fail. 

I love the honesty and vulnerability of this Psalm. There is no arrogance in it, a fact that must have been surprising to the people of surrounding cultures who had first heard this song: the king publicly asks for forgiveness for his transgressions, and proclaims his desperate need for God. Instead of boasting, David shows humility. Verse 4 reads, "Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long."

Dane C. Ortlund--one of my favorite Christian modern writers of our era, the same man who wrote my favorite book, Gentle and Lowly--helps me make sense of the Psalm. His book, In the Lord I Take Refuge, settles my heart and mind towards the long week ahead, a tool and a guide and, yes, a friend to my heart. Meditating on this Psalm, he writes, "When life overwhelms us, when the bottom is falling out, this is where Scripture takes us to God. We do not achieve internal calm by securing external calm. We find internal calm by looking to God." 

I took the photo on my way to Lugano, Switzerland, where I told the driver, who lived in the German-speaking part of the country, that I was from the tropics and I wished to escape the sun--a fact that puzzled him.