Category: Devotional

by Robert MacDonald

The question in my last post was ‘how do we know?’ It’s a multi-edged question since I have not included a direct object for the verb know? In my original context, you might think it was ‘how do we know that we are not mad’ as the Roman governor, Festus, said of Paul. And I noted that the Hebrew for mad is the same letters as the Hebrew for taste. These words are homonyms in Hebrew. They take part in the word games that the Hebrew poets played as they lament, ponder, and celebrate their history in the love of the instruction of Yahweh, their God.
Knowledge is a subjective thing. We are the subject, and it is our knowledge that we are thinking of, and our growth. But how do we know what constitutes maturing rather than degeneration? We all think about knowledge, but as Paul in 1 Corinthians reminds us, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Maturing, surely, is being built up, rather than being puffed up.
David begins the Psalms (Psalm 3:1) with great concern about his troubles: Lord, how multiplied are my straits. Many arise over me. David has many troubles. The Psalms begin with the narrow place that David finds himself in. He continues in verse 2: Many say of me, There is no salvation for him in God. Selah.
So think about this. No salvation. Has that accusation ever been said against you? Do you even imagine it yourself at times? Look at this from two points of view: On the one hand, we have the authority of the situation we are in. For David, it is according to this psalm, a situation with respect to his son, Absalom, whom he loved. In Paul’s situation as we have been considering in the closing chapters of Acts, it is his submission to the Roman system and his appeal to the emperor. And for us, we have our own immersion in our own culture, whether it be right or left, rich or poor, liberal or conservative, reader or scholar, and so on. On the other hand, we have the ultimate appeal to God. For David, note how the psalm speaks of his salvation, his safety, as ‘in’ God. Paul also writes of his own faith that is ‘in’ Christ.
And as for us, what must we be called ‘out of’ in order to be ‘in’ the salvation of God? There is no easy answer to this question. We may be fortunate or unfortunate in where we are born, but it is not our salvation. We have a lifetime of maturing – and perhaps generations – of putting aside the narrowness, the straits, that we are in, and in learning to love the enemies that we have constructed in our thoughts. And how do we know we are being matured by God, by Christ, by the Lord, by the Most High? A close reading of the Psalms will ground our faith in the God and Father of Jesus, the Anointed (Christ), because the Most High himself will be our teacher.
So from How do we know, we come to a new question: How do we grow? It is work to grow and it involves all of us. One of the things I note in my book on the Psalms, Seeing the Psalter, is that these poems have a purpose as a whole. And this is what it is in a few words. The poems have been consciously put together in sequence so that they might form a community of the merciful who have learned mercy through their covenant with God. This God knows how to ‘read’ these poems into us to show us how to accept mercy and to, in turn, be merciful. In doing so, the same Lord of Hosts will form us in the image of his child Jesus. And not only us, but everyone that we come in contact with, the whole body of our social fabric.
And as to how we know that the direction is building us up. We will know because the same God through us will deal with the case of the poor, and the judgment of the needy (Psalm 140:12).

by Robert MacDonald
Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

Such words we read in the New Testament. Paul claims he was not disobedient (Acts 26:19) but Festus interjects a few verses later that Paul is mad.
How do we know? We are not all given heavenly visions to ‘obey’ as Paul was. How do we know we are not mad in our pursuit of the calling that is in the Anointed Jesus? How will we be like-minded? Paul writes to the Philippians (3:14) that God will reveal our situation to us.
Now the question is: do we really want to know our situation? Take care. You may find things you did not want to know. But here is an excellent method, one that was used by Jesus himself in his own growth and maturing.
I was brought up with a certain inertia. You know what inertia is: it’s what happens to you when you are pushed in a particular direction, and you have to work to stop going in that direction. You may have had a good push or a bad one, but we all need to take charge of the momentum at some point in our lives. I reacted with a favorite word: No! No to the distortion produced by dangerous directions – take alcoholism for example, or to violent actions against others, or even to my own longing for I did not know what. ‘No’ came easily to me, but I really did not know a Yes that would satisfy. At some point I learned the gospel and learned the love of Christ that is without boundaries. But I had not been taught consciously of what I must do to enter into that glory.
The work which is explained in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament is a work described for us as if we were overhearing a conversation between a father and a son. Unto which of the Angels did he say: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee? (Hebrews 1:5 citing Psalm 2.)
This work includes our work, individually, mine and yours, and together, ours, caring for the work of God that is from the beginning and that is complete from then. We must become part of this conversation that we are overhearing. The conversation is an extended conversation that continues forever. In that letter to the Hebrews, the conversation is taken from the Psalms.
When I learned that the Psalms were where Jesus himself is in conversation with his Father, I knew that I must learn them more carefully. I knew when I discovered this, that I must hear that conversation in its original tongue. That meant learning a language that I knew not. (Psalm 81:6). Though I had discovered something of truth already, it was in the Psalms that God reached deeper into me and showed me more of how to live. It is there in that very personal conversation that we will find the truth of our situation, and complete the journey of obedience which God will reveal to us.
I could not find a book that would help me read them in sequence with a close reading that preserved the ancient foreign thought form in the way I wanted to see it. So I wrote it myself and called it Seeing the Psalter. It helps us see the story in the Psalms, and it slows us down in a number of ways so that we will not rush through the necessary time that we need for such hearing and obedience. Still, it is a beginning, but I am convinced we can continue in such a work.
If this be madness, Festus, it is a madness to be deeply desired, like David’s pretense when he feigned his madness in the face of Abimelek (Psalm 34:1). And he writes there in the 7^th verse: this poor one calls and the Lord hears and from all his troubles he saves him. And later “taste and see that the Lord is good.” This word taste has the same letters in Hebrew as the word used for madness.