Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction: Hope in God in a World That Is Broken - Psalm 27 13

Meditations

1 Life as a Student

2 Breathing Violence

3 Realistic Expectations

4 Fearless Forever

5 The World’s Best Security System

6 On Christ the Solid Rock

7 Sight Problems

8 What Is Your One Thing?

9 Two Words You Never Want to Hear

10 Sign Beauty

11 Inner Strength

12 Goodness

13 Why Would God Ever Answer Me?

14 You’re Talking to Yourself

15 The Shortest Distance between Two Points

16 Mercy Prayer

17 Uber Music

18 Take Heart

19 Not Yours

20 Sinned Against Again

21 The Pursuit-of-God Paradigm

22 Safe

23 The Delusion of Independence

24 Singleness of Focus

25 The Worship of Another

26 The Rejection of Rejection

27 Spiritual Muscles

28 The Back of God’s Head

29 Under Attack

30 Someday

31 The Theology of Beauty

32 One Beauty

33 Wanting What Is Right When You Are Wronged

34 People in Need of Help

35 Watch Out for the Flesh Eaters!

36 Why I Hate to Wait

37 Losing Heart

38 Where You Gonna Run, Where You Gonna Hide?

39 Days of Beauty

40 Going to School

41 The Good Life

42 Family Forever

43 Caught in the Middle

44 From Your Lips to Messiah’s Ears

45 Why Bother?

46 Productive Delay

47 Hearts at Rest

48 False Witnesses

49 A Plan for Your Life

50 Stumbling at the Cross

51 Functional Blindness

52 Rest

Introduction: Hope in God in a World That Is Broken

It was the call no parent ever wants to get. Our daughter had been walking down the street in Philadelphia when a drunk and unlicensed driver careened onto the sidewalk and crushed her against a wall. It was the beginning of many, many months of travail. (By God’s grace she is doing very well now.)

There are many mysteries to this moment in our lives that we will never solve. Yet, there are a few things that we know for sure. We really do live in a fallen world. We haven’t been given a ticket out of the brokenness of this world simply because we are the children of God. What happened to our daughter was a horrible injustice, followed by day upon day of remarkable pain. The world we live in simply is not operating the way God intended.

There is a second thing we know for sure. There is a God of awesome grace who meets his children in moments of darkness and difficulty. He is worth running to. He is worth waiting for. He brings rest when it seems like there is no rest to be found.

But there is a third thing. You and I were just not hardwired to make our way through this fallen world on our own. We were meant to exist with eyes filled with the beauty of his presence and hearts at rest in the lap of his goodness. This is what I love about the Psalms. They put difficulty and hope together in the tension of hardship and grace that is the life of everyone this side of eternity.

It is not hard to recognize the environment of the Psalms. The Psalms live in your city, on your street, in your family. The Psalms tell your story. It is a story of hope and disappointment, of need and provision, of fear and mystery, of struggle and rest, and of God’s boundless love and amazing grace. People in the psalms get angry, grow afraid, cry out in confusion, survive opposition, hope for bet¬ter days, hurt one another, help one another, run from God, trust in God, make foolish choices, ask for forgiveness, and grow wiser and stronger. They are people just like you and me.

Psalm 27 is a psalm of honesty and hope. Like real life, it is written between the tension of a life of trouble and a God of grace. It is a psalm of fear, but in it fear gives way to confidence. It is a psalm of danger, but it speaks with power and practicality of the safety that can be found in the Lord. In many ways it is a sad psalm, yet it is punctuated with songs of joy. It is a psalm of rejection, but it sings the acceptance of the Lord. It is a psalm of action, yet it finds its strength in waiting on the Lord. There are four things that draw me to this psalm.

1) Its shock value. David is writing about being under attack. The words are graphic and clear: “When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes. . . . Though an army encamp against me . . . though war arise against me. . . . For false witnesses have risen against me, and they breathe out violence.”

These would be difficult circumstances for any of us, but think with me: if you were in the middle of them, what is the first thing you would pray for? What is the central thing you would desire? You almost can’t help but be shocked by David’s response. He doesn’t crave vengeance. He doesn’t cry out first for protection or justice. No, David’s first thoughts run to the temple, where the Lord dwells. The first desire of his heart is to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. At first look, this response seems almost shockingly unnatural, that is, until you let Psalm 27 teach you about faith, safety, and the presence of the Lord.

2) Its regularity. For all of its seeming shock value, Psalm 27 gives an accurate and familiar picture of what normal life is like in a fallen world. A moment of high worship is followed by a situation of trouble. A moment of insight is followed by a moment of confusion. Rest is followed by threat. Call to action is followed by the need to wait. Confidence that God is near is followed by a desperate plea that he would hear and answer. These are the variegated colors of a world in need of restoration. These are the regular ups and downs, ins and outs, and highs and lows of living with the Lord in a place that is broken. When you read this psalm, you get the impression that David lived where we live.

3) Its focus on Christ. Underneath the psalm’s accurate depiction of the here-and-there experiences of the world we all live in is a deeper theme. This theme is really the unifying theme of the psalm. It is the thing that gives this psalm of trouble and faith its hope. What is this theme? It is Christ. All of the fingers of this psalm point to Christ. Jesus came to earth, knowing the trouble he would face, but he was not afraid; he knew his Father would be his light and salvation. Jesus knew that his enemies would stumble and fall.

In the cross’s most dramatic moment, it was Jesus who cried for his Father not to turn away in anger. It was Jesus who said he would not be alone, even though his father and mother would forsake him. Jesus faced the false witnesses who were intent on violence. Beneath everything else, this is a psalm of sin and redemption, and because of that, again and again it points us to the Redeemer who will come to suffer injustice, violence, and ultimately the rejection of his Father so that we might know forgiveness, acceptance, life, and hope.

4) Its call to patient hope. This is not a cynical, survivalist psalm. It does not have an “I’ve been taken once and it won’t happen again” feel to it. For all of the trouble that courses its way through this psalm, it is in the end a psalm of bright and lasting hope. It doesn’t call us to live self-protectively. It doesn’t give us seven steps for avoiding the difficulties of the fallen world.

No, Psalm 27 tells that even in the middle of difficulties that we do not understand nor seem able to escape, we have reason to take heart and have hope. And the hope of Psalm 27 is not like the hope of a child who has just been promised ice cream in a few hours. The child does hope that the ice cream will actually materialize, and she believes it will because she believes that her parents really love her. But she will come back every five minutes to ask you if it’s time for ice cream yet! The hope of Psalm 27 is patient, and it grows stronger as it waits, because it is rooted in a daily consideration of the goodness of the Lord. This really does speak into the familiar realities of your life and mine with challenge and hope, with conviction and encouragement, and with honesty and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me say a little bit about the fifty-two meditations that you will be reading. You are not holding an exegetical commentary on Psalm 27. I have approached the psalm like a wood butcher. The wood butcher cuts into a log, looking for boards with a particularly interesting or elegant grain, and cuts them out like a meat butcher would do with a fine steak. Then he places them next to other boards of similar beauty and assembles them into a table, a chair, or a fine wooden box. He assembles the pieces intentionally to help others see their individual and collective beauty in a way they wouldn’t without his eyes and his hands.

I have cut into the log of Psalm 27 and pulled out themes of interesting and elegant grain and assembled them into a picture of how to live with hope in God in a world that is fallen. No two of these reflections are exactly alike. Each has a different grain, yet each is meant to catch your attention and help you to see. My hope is that as you examine the variegated grains of truth that are in this psalm, you will not settle for self-protection or survival. My hope is that these reflections will fill your heart with a patient hope that grows stronger as the trouble-spotted days go by.