Walking in God’s Truth

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. (v. 11)

Lord, unite my heart to walk in your truth today.

“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him” (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov). Confession: I lie to myself every day, glossing over my pride, selfishness, and indifference. I rationalize and excuse conduct I’m quick to condemn in others. Left unchecked, these tendencies would result in a grotesque gap between how I see myself and how I really am.

According to the Christian mystic Thomas Merton, the first step in finding God is to discover the truth about ourselves, regardless of how painful that may prove to be. Given our capacity for self-deception, we do not have the resources within us to discover this truth on our own. Only God can reveal our true nature and condition to us; only by humility and prayer can we accept the truth he reveals.

Churchill quipped that many who stumble upon the truth pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened. Christians need a different approach. We know we don’t have to ignore or deny the deformity of our nature because it is this very nature that becomes renewed in Christ. When we humbly strive to unite our hearts to fear God and walk in his truth, we find the Lord faithful and willing to forgive, “and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

God’s Deep Thoughts

How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep! (v. 5)

Help me to learn the secret of true contentment.

If life is suffering, as M. Scott Peck said in The Road Less Travelled, and if Christians are not exempt, as we know from Jesus himself and from our own experience, then how can we account for those who seem to enjoy God’s special favor? A lot of people have puzzled over the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But we might just as easily ask, “Why do good things happen to some people who trust God and not to others who trust him just as much?”

The person who wrote Psalm 92 testified that he enjoyed such special favor from God, and he seems to attribute it to personal righteousness. “The righteous flourish like the palm tree . . . they flourish in the courts of our God” (vv. 12-13). But other psalms remind us that the wicked sometimes flourish, at least for a while (Ps. 73), and the righteous sometimes suffer, at least for a while (Ps. 22).

Our tendency is to look at our immediate circumstances and see nothing beyond them. God, whose thoughts are “very deep,” sees from the advantage of eternity and through the lens of the ultimate provision he has made for us in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). So temporary circumstances can be misleading. We cannot peer into the mysterious depths of the eternal counsel of God, but we can say with the apostle Paul, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Phil. 4:11).

Temptation

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. (v. 11)

Lord, I believe that whatever happens, you guard me in all my ways.

According to the twentieth-century physicist Niels Bohr, there are two kinds of truth: small truths and great truths. The opposite of a small truth is falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another great truth.

There is a great truth taught in Psalm 91. It is the startling claim that no evil will befall those who put their trust in God because God will use his angels to protect them. Over against this great truth is the opposite great truth that Jesus Christ, who supremely trusted in God, was subject to the greatest suffering and the most monstrous evil imaginable. His followers, he made it clear, could expect the same.

How to reconcile these two great truths? Perhaps a way to understand this paradox lies in the temptation story as it is told in Luke 4. In Luke’s narrative the supreme temptation is for Jesus to prove he is God by jumping off the pinnacle of the temple, because, as the devil says (quoting Psalm 91:11), “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you.” Jesus replies, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” If we are tempted to think we’re specially favored, and that the assurances of Psalm 91 mean we will not have to endure difficulties and even suffering, it becomes just that: a temptation. At this point we can resolve the apparent contradiction between these two great truths by simply trusting God as Jesus did.

There’s No Place like Home

And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (v. 2 NRSV)

Good and loving God, giver of life and restorer of all things, may we rest in the promise of the resurrection and the renewal of heaven and earth.

We were on vacation and had been traveling for a number of weeks. Everyone—I, my wife, and our three young daughters—was tired. We were ready for the feel of our own beds, the sights and sounds of our hometown, the familiar routines of life. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we were ready to chant, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

In this the last chapter of the Bible, John is trying to describe God’s good future of shalom. There is a renewed heaven and earth. The holy city descends and heaven and earth are one. God pitches his tent with us mortals and wipes every tear from our eyes. And the One seated on the great throne declares that he is making all things new (not all new things).

And note this: there are rivers and trees, and the leaves of the tree of life, with twelve kinds of fruit, are for the healing of the nations. No more trees used to make battering rams to lay siege to medieval cities. No more trees felled to make masts for colonial slave ships. No more trees pulped to make propaganda to fuel the fires of ethnic cleansing. These trees are for healing. This is a vision of shalom. There’s no place like home.

The Home Planet

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. (v. 2)

God the great recycler and restorer, give us the courage and the wisdom to be faithful earthkeepers on this our home planet.

Many Christians in America seem to think that when Jesus comes again the earth will be destroyed. After true believers are raptured off the planet, they believe, the earth will be burned up to nothing. “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.” But is this view of the future found in Scripture? It may be popular, but is it true?

A closer look reveals that this escapist theology is not biblical. For example, God’s good future presented to us in the last chapters of Revelation is a vision of the redemption of the earth. Creation is purified and renewed, not destroyed. The holy city, the new Jerusalem, comes down to earth; we don’t go up to it. God is making all things new, not all new things. In the Greek used throughout these verses, new means “renewed” (kainos) not “absolutely new” (neos). Renewal, repair, restoration. This vision from John is earthy and earthly. This is our home planet, and God’s home is among humans on a heavenly earth.

Eschatology shapes our ethics—what we believe about the future shapes how we act in the present. So if the Bible’s final vision is true, then we must strive to take care of our home planet. We are God’s earthkeepers. May we with humility do what we are called to do.