Over the last few months we have been blogging summaries from Eugene Peterson’s Book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction,” based upon the Songs Of Ascents. This colletion of Psalms serve as a wonderful guide in the pursuit of glorifying God through all of life. Here is a pdf of the entire series.
Psalm 134 (ESV)
1Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD,
who stand by night in the house of the LORD!
2 Lift up your hands to the holy place
and bless the LORD!
3May the LORD bless you from Zion,
he who made heaven and earth!
Stand, Stoop, Stay:
The way of discipleship begins in an act of repentance and concludes in a life of praise. God enters into a covenant with us, he pours out his own life for us, he shares the goodness of his Spirit, the vitality of his creation, the joys of his redemption. That is blessing.
The God who stands, stoops, and stays summarizes the posture of blessing: God stands—he is foundational and dependable; God stoops—he kneels to our level and meets us where we are; God stays—he sticks with us through hard times and good, sharing his life with us in grace and peace.
An Invitation and a Command:
Psalm 134 features the word blessing in a form that might be called an invitation and a command. Bless God. Do that for which you were created and redeemed; lift you voices in gratitude; enter into the community of praise and prayer that anticipates the final consummation of faith in heaven. Bless The Lord.
Feelings Don’t Run the Show:
Lift your arms in blessing and just maybe your heart will get the message and be lifted up also in praise. Find the right things to do, practice the actions, and other things will follow. By changing our behavior we can change our feelings. This creates an atmosphere where feelings don’t run the show. There is a reality deeper than feelings. Bless The Lord.
Taking God seriously but Not Ourselves:
Never take yourself seriously and always take God seriously, and therefore, you will be full of cheerfulness, and exuberant with blessing. Blessing is at the end of this road. And that which is at the end of the road influences everything that takes place along the road. A joyful end requires a joyful means. Bless the Lord.
The Chief End:
If you do not convey joy in your demeanor and gesture and speech, you will not be an authentic witness for Jesus Christ. Delight in what God is doing, is essential in our work. The main thing is not work for the Lord; it is not suffering in the name of the Lord; it is not witnessing for the Lord; it is not teaching Sunday school for the Lord; it is not being responsible for the sake of the Lord in the community; it is not keeping the Ten Commandments; not loving your neighbor; not observing the golden rule. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is the destination of our ascent as Christians; God’s glory in our enjoyment of God. Bless the Lord.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 133 (ESV)
1Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the LORD has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.
Our membership in the church is a corollary of our faith in Christ. We can no more be a Christian and have nothing to do with the church than we can be a person and not be in a family. When we become Christians, we are among brothers and sisters in faith. No Christian is an only child.
Not Like Paying Taxes:
This Psalm puts into song what is said and demonstrated throughout Scripture: community is essential. God never works with individuals in isolation for isolation, but always with people in community. How great it is to have everyone sharing a common purpose, traveling a common path, striving toward a common goal, that path and purpose and goal being God.
Two Ways to Avoid Community:
Living together in a way that evokes the glad song of Psalm 133 is one of the great and arduous tasks before Christ’s people. Nothing is more difficult. A common way to avoid community is to deal with people as problems to be solved rather than see them as brothers and sisters to serve. Christians, rightfully understood, are a community of people who are visibly together at worship but who also remain in relationship through the week in witness and service. Another common way to avoid community is to turn the church into an institution. In this way people are treated not on the basis of personal relationships but in terms of impersonal functions.
Every community of Christians is imperiled when either routes are pursued: the route of defining people as problems to be solved, the way one might repair an automobile or the route of lumping people together in terms of economic ability or institutional effectiveness, the way one might run a bank. Somewhere else lies community—a place where each person is taken seriously, learns to trust others, depend on others, be compassionate with others, rejoices with others.
Each Other’s Priest:
The first image of this Psalm is one of anointing with costly oil. The oil was being used symbolically to represent marking a person as a priest. Living together means seeing my brother and sister as my priest. When we see the other as God’s anointed, our relationships are profoundly affected. It is not what a Christian is in themselves, their spirituality and piety, which constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what a man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ had done to us and what Christ makes us.
The second image of this Psalm is the dew on Mount Hermon flowing down the slopes of Zion. Symbolic of the renewing spirit that God provides us. Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed expectation of what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. When we are in community with those Christ loves and redeems, we are constantly finding out new things about them. They are new persons each morning, endless in their possibilities, renewed by the love of Christ.
The oil communicates warm, priestly relationship. The dew communicates fresh and expectant newness.
Rousing Good Fellowship:
Christians are always attempting and never quite succeed at getting a picture of the life everlasting. Psalm 1333 throws out just a hint of heaven. It is where relationships are warm and expectancies fresh, we are already beginning to enjoy the life together that will be completed in our life everlasting.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 132 (ESV)
1Remember, O LORD, in David’s favor,
all the hardships he endured,
2how he swore to the LORD
and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
3 “I will not enter my house
or get into my bed,
4I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids,
5until I find a place for the LORD,
a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
6Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah;
we found it in the fields of Jaar.
7 “Let us go to his dwelling place;
let us worship at his footstool!”
8 Arise, O LORD, and go to your resting place,
you and the ark of your might.
9Let your priests be clothed with righteousness,
and let your saints shout for joy.
10For the sake of your servant David,
do not turn away the face of your anointed one.
11 The LORD swore to David a sure oath
from which he will not turn back:
“One of the sons of your body
I will set on your throne.
12If your sons keep my covenant
and my testimonies that I shall teach them,
their sons also forever
shall sit on your throne.”
13For the LORD has chosen Zion;
he has desired it for his dwelling place:
14 “This is my resting place forever;
here I will dwell, for I have desired it.
15I will abundantly bless her provisions;
I will satisfy her poor with bread.
16Her priests I will clothe with salvation,
and her saints will shout for joy.
17There I will make a horn to sprout for David;
I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.
18His enemies I will clothe with shame,
but on him his crown will shine.”
True knowledge of God is born out of obedience. (John Calvin)
Stable, Not Petrified:
We want Christian faith that has stability but is not petrified, that has vision but is not hallucinatory. Psalm 132 is a psalm of David’s obedience. The psalm shows obedience as a lively, adventurous response of faith that is rooted in historical fact and reaches into a promised hope.
Obedience with a History:
The first half of Psalm 132 is the part that roots obedience in fact and keeps our feet on the ground. There is a vast, rich reality of obedience beneath the feet of disciples; and if we are going to live as the people of God, we need more data than our own experiences to draw from. Biblical history is a good memory for what does and does not work. Psalm 132 activates faith’s memory so that obedience will be grounded.
Hope: A Race Towards God’s Promises:
Psalm 132 doesn’t just keep our feet on the ground, it also gets them off the ground. For obedience is not a stodgy plodding in the ruts of religion, it is a hopeful race toward God’s promises. Obedience is fulfilled by hope. Psalm 132 cultivates a hope that gives wings to obedience, a hope that is consistent with the reality of what God has done in the past but is not confined to it. All the expectations listed in Psalm 132 have their origin in an accurately remembered past. Christians who master Psalm 132 will be protected from the danger that we should reduce Christian existence to ritually obeying a few commandments that are congenial to our temperament and convenient to our standard of living. It gives us, instead, a vision into the future so that we can see what is right before us. Obedience is doing what God tells us to do in it.
The Strength to Stand, the Willingness to Leap:
In such ways Psalm 132 cultivates the memory and nurtures the hope that lead to mature obedience. For Christian living demands that we keep our feet on the ground; it also asks us to make a leap of faith. What we require is obedience—the strength to stand and the willingness to leap, and the sense to know when to do which. Which is exactly what we get when an accurate memory of God’s ways is combined with a lively hope in His promises.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 131 (ESV)
1O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.
Humility is the obverse side of God, whereas pride is the obverse side of confidence in self. (John Baillie)
Psalm 131 is a maintenance psalm. It gets rid of that which looks good to those who don’t know any better, and reduces the distance between our hearts and their roots in God. The two things that Psalm 131 prunes away are unruly ambition and infantile dependency.
Aspiration Gone Crazy:
All cultures throw certain stumbling blocks in the way of those who pursue gospel realities. The way of faith deals with these realities whenever and in every culture. One stumbling block that has become prevalent is ambition. Our culture encourages and rewards ambition without qualification. To be on top, no matter what your on top of, is admired. It is hard to recognize pride as a sin when it is held up on every side as a virtue, urged as profitable and rewarded as an achievement.
We are caught up in a way of life that, instead of delighting in finding out the meaning of God and searching out the conditions in which human qualities can best be realized, recklessly seeks ways to circumvent nature, arrogantly defies personal relationships and names God only in curses. Those who yield themselves up to the influence of ambition will soon lose themselves in a labyrinth of perplexity.
As Content as a Child:
Having realized the dangers of pride, the sin of thinking too much of ourselves, we are suddenly in danger of another mistake, thinking too little of ourselves. There are some that believe since the great Christian temptation is to be everything, the perfect solution is to be nothing. These people then compensate for their lives by weepily clinging to God. But Christian faith is not neurotic dependency but childlike trust. We do not cling to God desperately out of fear and the panic of insecurity; we come to him freely in faith and love. Our Lord gave us the picture of a child as a model for Christian faith, not because of the child’s helplessness, but because of the child’s willingness to be led, to be taught, to be blessed. For God does not want us neurotically dependent on him but willingly trustful in him.
The Plain Way:
We are always, it seems, reeling from one side of the road to the other as we travel in the way of faith. We are first incited into being grandiose and then intimidated into being infantile. But there is another way, the plain way of quiet Christian humility. As we learn this Psalm we discover the quietness of the weaned child, the tranquility of maturing trust. Psalm 131 nurtures: a quality of calm confidence and quiet strength that knows the difference between unruly arrogance and faithful aspiration. This song teaches us not to seek our glory but to be about God’s glory as the one we trust, the one we love to be with, and the one we hope in from this time forth and forevermore.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 130 (ESV)
1Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
2O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
3If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
5I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
7O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
8And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.
To be human is to be in trouble. Man and woman, alone in creation, suffer. For suffering is pain plus: physical or emotional pain plus the awareness that our own worth as people is threatened, that our own value as creatures made in the dignity of God is called into question, that our own destiny as eternal souls is jeopardized. A Christian is a person who decides to face and live through suffering. Psalm 130 grapples mightily with suffering, sings its way through it, and provides usable experience for those who are committed to traveling the way of faith to God through Jesus Christ.
Giving Dignity to Suffering:
By setting the anguish out in the open and voicing it as a prayer, the psalm gives a dignity to our suffering. We should set suffering squarely, openly, and passionately before God. The Gospels offer this view of suffering: in suffering we enter the depths; we are at the heart of things; we are near to where Christ was on the cross. Psalm 130 focuses on immersing suffering in God as all the suffering is spoken in the form of prayer, which means that God is taken seriously as a personal and concerned Father.
Employed to Wait:
Such are the two great realities of Psalm 130: suffering is real; God is real. We will cry from the depths and our cry will be heard. Suffering is a mark of our existential authenticity; God is proof of our essential and eternal humanity. We are to wait and watch, and through this will find hope. This means going about our assigned task of suffering with the knowledge that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions.
An Eye Specialist and a Painter:
When we suffer we attract counselors as money attracts thieves. Everybody has an idea of what we did wrong to get into this situation and also how to get out. But what we truly need is hope; hope from God. We need to know that suffering is part of what it means to be human and not something alien. We need to know where we are and where God is. We need to know that God understand and cares about our suffering.
Psalm 130 is essential equipment, for it convinces us that the big difference is not in what people suffer but in the way they suffer. This psalm is a powerful demonstration that our place in the depths is not out of bounds from God. This Psalm shows us that our hope comes not from our holiness, our performance, or our abilities, but is grounded in God’s steadfast love, in His plentiful redemption, in His sanctifying work. Cry out from your depths. Cry out to the LORD who hears. Cry out knowing He hears not because your sinless but because He forgives. Cry out and wait for His redemption not for worldly council. Cry out and wait in hope “For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 129 (ESV)
1 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth”-
let Israel now say-
2 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not prevailed against me.
3 The plowers plowed upon my back;
they made long their furrows.”
4The LORD is righteous;
he has cut the cords of the wicked.
5May all who hate Zion
be put to shame and turned backward!
6Let them be like the grass on the housetops,
which withers before it grows up,
7with which the reaper does not fill his hand
nor the binder of sheaves his arms,
8nor do those who pass by say,
“The blessing of the LORD be upon you!
We bless you in the name of the LORD!”
Tough Faith:
The people of God are tough. For long centuries those who belong to the world have waged war against the way of faith, and they have yet to win. Christian faith needs to be as tough as a perennial that can stick it out through storm and drought, survive the trampling of careless feet and the attacks of vandals. The person of true faith outlasts all the oppressors. Faith lasts.
Jesus’ ministry began with forty days of temptation and concluded with his crucifixion. There were cunning attempts to get him off track, every temptation disguised as a suggestion for improvement, offered with the best of intentions to help Jesus in the ministry on which he had so naively and innocently set out. The way of Jesus’ faith is the way our faith should be. It is not a fad that is taken up in one century only to be discarded in the next. It is a way that works. It has been tested thoroughly.
Cut Cords, Withered Grass:
The life of the world that is opposed or indifferent to God is barren and futile. It is naively thinking you might get a harvest of grain from that shallow patch of dirt on a shelf of rock. The way of the world is marked by proud, God-defying purposes, unharnessed from eternity and therefore worthless and futile. As this Psalm points out the world’s way results in withered grass which comes to nothing at the harvest.
The Passion of Patience:
For who does not experience flashes of anger at those who make our way hard and difficult? There are times in the long obedience of Christian discipleship when we get tired and fatigue draws our tempers short. In this time we look to God to give us patience and fill us with love. We all make mistakes in this walk, just as the psalmist did in Psalm 129, but perseverance does not mean perfection. It means that we keep on going right through all the people that make our way more treacherous. We will not learn by swallowing our sense of outrage, or excusing all wickedness as a neurosis. We will do it by offering up our anger to God, who trains us in creative love.
God Sticks with Us:
The cornerstone sentence of Psalm 129 is “The LORD is righteous; he has cut the cords of the wicked.” The emphasis is on his dependable personal relationship. He is always there for us. That he fights for us is the reason Christians can look back over a long life crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions, and see it all as a road of blessings. The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own.
Purposes Last:
The Christian faith is the discovery of the God who sticks with us, the righteous God. Christian discipleship is a responsive decision to walk in his ways, steadily and firmly, and then finding that His way integrates all our interests, passions and gifts, our human needs and our eternal aspirations. It is the way of life we were created for. It is the way of life that does not end in a weak and withered harvest but one blessed by the righteous LORD.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 128 (ESV)
1 Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD,
who walks in his ways!
2You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
3Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
4Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the LORD.
5 The LORD bless you from Zion!
May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem
all the days of your life!
6May you see your children’s children!
Peace be upon Israel!
Being a Christian is what we were created for. The life of faith has the support of an entire creation and the resources of a magnificent redemption.
Promises and Pronouncements:
Blessing is the word that describes this happy state of affairs. Psalm 128, sandwiched between promises and pronouncements, is an illustration of blessing. An image of a life that is bounded on one side by promises of blessing, on the other side by pronouncements of blessing, and experiences blessings between those boundaries.
Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, identifies the eight key qualities in the life of a person of faith and announces each one with the word blessed. Jesus makes it clear that discipleship is an expansion of our capacities, an overflowing of joy, and a blessed life.
Sharing In Life:
Blessing has inherent in it the power to increase. It functions by sharing and delight in life. We must develop better and deeper concepts of happiness than those held by the world, which makes a happy life to consist in “ease, honors, and great wealth.” Psalm 128 helps us do that. Too much of the world’s happiness depends on taking from one to satisfy the other. As we learn to give and share, our vitality increases, and the people around us become fruitful vines and olive shoots at our tables. For the Christian, blessing comes so that we can bless. Being blessed results in blessing others.
Traveling by the Roads:
To guard against all blasphemous chumminess with the Almighty, the Bible talks of the fear of the Lord—not to scare us but to bring us to awesome attention before the overwhelming grandeur of God. Not only do we let God be God as he really is, but we start doing the things for which he made us.
People accuse religion with interfering with what they consider their innocent pleasures and wishes. But religion is an inconvenience only to those who are traveling against the grain of creation, at cross-purposes with the way that leads to redemption. God’s way, and God’s presence are where we experience happiness that lasts, to our children’s children.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 127 (ESV)
1Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
2It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
3Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
4Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
5Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
One of the tasks of Christian discipleship is to relearn how to work. One requirement of discipleship is to learn the ways sin skews our nature and to submit what we learn to the continuing will of God, so that we are reshaped through the days of our obedience. Psalm 127 show both the right way and he wrong way to work. It posts a warning and provides an example to guide Christians in work that is done to the glory of God.
Babel or Buddhist:
Psalm 127 first posts a warning about work. If we work without God then we are wasting our time. Anything we try and accomplish on our own, without his blessing, will never glorify him. Psalm 127 shows a way to work that is neither sheer activity nor pure passivity. It doesn’t glorify work as such, and it doesn’t condemn work as such. If we want to experience the fullness of work we need to work for what God wants.
In the Beginning God Worked:
The Bible begins with an announcement that God created. He did something, he created something, he worked. The work of God is defined in the Scriptures. One of the reasons that Christians read Scripture repeatedly and carefully is to find out just how God works in Jesus Christ so that we can first rest in the work of Jesus Christ (The Gospel) and then work in the name of Jesus Christ.
In every letter that the apostle Paul wrote, he demonstrated that a Christian’s work is a natural, inevitable and faithful development out of God’s work. Christian discipleship, by orienting us in God’s work and setting us in the mainstream of what God is already doing, frees us from the compulsiveness of work. Every Christian must be constantly vigilant against believing that they can do God’s work for him.
The foundational truth is that work is good. If God does it, it must be all right. Work has dignity: there can be nothing degrading about work if God works. Work had purpose: there can be nothing futile about work if God works.
Effortless Work:
In contrast to the anxious labor that builds cities and guards possessions, this Psalm praises the effortless work of making children. We do not make these people that walk among us, we participate in an act of love that was provided for us in the structure of God’s creation. By joining Jesus and the Psalm we learn a way of work that does not acquire things or amass possessions but responds to God and develops relationships. The work that we are called to do is the personal relationships that we create and develop. Out of numerous handshakes and greetings, some germinate and grow into a friendship in Christ.
Relentless compulsive work habits which our society rewards and admires are seen by the psalmist as a sign of weak faith and assertive pride, as if God could not be trusted to accomplish his will, as if we could rearrange the universe by our own effort. Psalm 127 insists on a perspective in which our effort is at the periphery and God’s work is at the center.
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
Psalm 126 (ESV)
1When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
3The LORD has done great things for us;
we are glad.
4Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like streams in the Negeb!
5 Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
6He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.
One of the delightful discoveries along the way of Christian discipleship is how much enjoyment there is, how much laughter you hear, how much sheer fun you find. As Christians we should partake in joy as a daily ritual, exclaiming our enjoyment in living a life of obedience to God.
A Consequence, Not a Requirement:
Joy is characteristic of the Christian pilgrimage. It is the second in Paul’s list of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22 – 23). It is the first of Jesus’ signs in the Gospel of John. Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience. We can decide to live in response to the abundance of God and not under the dictatorship of our own poor needs. One of the certain consequences of such a life is joy, the kind expressed in Psalm 126.
Joyful Expectation:
Joy is nurtured by anticipation. If the joy-producing acts of God are characteristic of our past as God’s people, they will also be characteristic of our future as his people. Christian joy is not an escape from sorrow. Pain and hardship still come, but they are unable to drive out the happiness that the redeemed will experience. Joy is what God gives, not what we work up.
Christian joy happens in the midst of pain, suffering, loneliness, and misfortune. “3More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10For 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. 11More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Rom 5:3-11).
The psalm does not give joy as a package or as a formula, but there are some things it does do. It shows up the tininess of the world’s joy and affirms the solidarity of God’s joy. God promises that whatever else is happening we can be a happy people. Why? Because “the LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.”
(This post is a summary and partial abridgement of Eugene Peterson’s book “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction.” It is based solely on Peterson’s work and any help that this content gives should be credited to God’s grace through Peterson’s effort. In other words, give God glory, thank Eugene Peterson and consider buying the book.)
