Showing posts with label Psalms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psalms. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
the King & I
Honest to goodness, if I have to watch Katherine Heigl overcome her insatiable crazy one more time or see Kristen Bell show off her blunt-cut bangs or hear Reese Witherspoon ...
Wait a minute.
Reese Witherspoon I actually like. That she's from Nashville is reason enough. Add to that the facts that she attended the same school as Amy Grant and can play June Carter Cash better than the woman herself, and I am officially a fan.The same cannot be said, however, for the genre of films typified by her work in such movies as Sweet Home Alabama and the unbelievably misguided follow-up to Walk the Line, Just Like Heaven, in which she plays a ghost courting a landscape architect.
Yes. I'm serious.
And no. I didn't see it.
I just get so frustrated with the perfect little "Hollywood endings," where everything is all neatly wrapped up and, no matter how unlikely, no matter if you're a friggin' ghost, for Pete's sake (I'm looking at you here, Reese), it all works out in the end. This has just not been my experience. As a result, I find myself growing increasingly cynical towards a class of films where the implausible is more commonplace than the probable.
Instead, I prefer to feed my cinemappetite on a diet of films whose stories are far more realistic. Tropic Thunder comes to mind, as does the classic MacGruber (now on DVD!)
in which the only American hero to earn 16 purple hearts, 3 Congressional Medals of Honor, and 7 Presidential Medals of Bravery 
saves the world from nuclear war using little more than a bobby pin, some street smarts, and a really rockin' mullet. All kidding aside, I do prefer to watch (and read) things that I can relate to, things that make me think, "Boy, have I been there" and "Man, it sure is good to know I'm not alone in thinking that!"
That's probably why I like the book of Psalms so much. Talk about relatable. In my opinion, it reflects the roller coaster of emotions we feel on this ride of life. Feeling never better, with a song in your heart and a sparkle in your eye? There's a Psalm for that! Think that gray skies and endless rain couldn't even express the extent of your morose melancholy? Well, guess what. So did David!
Psalms had really been just any other book of the Bible to me until about a year and a half ago. I had just broken up with my boyfriend and was nursing a broken heart and a shattered spirit. At the same time, I was prone to outbursts of tears both unprovoked and unquenchable. As Jonathan Forbes said of Jan Morrow in Pillow Talk (one chick flick I DO like, though probably more for Doris Day's costumes than the actual storyline): "I never knew a woman that size had that much water in her!"
Shortly thereafter, I happened to start a devotion book on the life of David. As soon as I did, he was my companion in the valley. My misery loved his company.
Truly, just like him, there were times in my journey of recovery when I was high: "Thank You, Lord, for Your guidance. Thank You that You lead me, and You keep me from making mistakes." Same goes for David. "Praise the Lord, O my soul," he wrote. "All my inmost being, praise His holy name ... and forget not all His benefits!" (Ps. 103:1, 2b). Other times, I was lower than a well-digger's shoes, borrowing the shepherd's words when I'd plead, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? ... How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?" (Ps. 13:1a, 2). In these moments, I could almost hear David whisper, "Boy, have I been there."
There was one way, though, in which I couldn't relate to David. He was constantly talking about his enemies being after him - "O Lord, how many are my foes!" (Ps. 3:1) "Save and deliver me from all who pursue me." (Ps. 7:1). "Wah-wah-what is he talking about?" I'd think, sort of annoyed, to be perfectly honest. This sort of chase is just a tad outside the purview of my experience, sorta like the "Hollywood ending" of every chick flick I've ever (begrudgingly) seen.
But it was real life for David. Just like getting the guy is real life for each of Julia Roberts' characters, so was it commonplace for David to be on the run for his life. He had armies and kings after him. At certain points, his own son sought to kill him. He was forced to call out to God from the shallow safety of a cave. And him a king?! Needless to say, these were points on which my buddy David and I couldn't really commiserate.
Until recently.
Follow me here down the trail called "Digression": my transition from PC to Mac began last Christmas when I got my beloved MacBook Pro. It was completed a week ago when I became the proud (and obsessive) owner of an iPhone 4.
As amazed by the App Store as I am Shutterfly slideshows, I downloaded a Bible app and signed up for a Daily Reading Plan of Psalms (I also downloaded a Skee-Ball app, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this post, other than the fact that I've stopped writing no fewer than six times to squeeze in a game ... or seven. It's just that the cyber prizes 
(Hamburger Phone, anyone?!) are really cool). Anyway, the Plan starts with Psalm 1 and works through the book numerically. In reading it, I was instantly reminded of one of the differences between David's experience and mine, as he started droning on and on again about his enemies, asking God to save him from them, and there I was again, wondering what in this world that had to do with me: "Come on, David," I'd think, rolling my eyes Heavenward. "Hit me where I live, Brother."
And then he did.
He kept talking about the way he'd overcome his enemies. In Psalm 8:2, he said, "From the lips of children and infants, You have ordained praise because of Your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger." Soon after, he wrote this in Psalm 9:1-3 - "I will sing praise to Your name, o Most High. My enemies turn back; they stumble and perish before You."
This verse instantly made me envision that scene in Airplane when Robert Stack fights off zealots of a thousand different stripes, only, in my vision, David did it in reverse - he'd sucker punch his enemies with songs of praise to his God. "Oh, yeah, Saul? You wanna slaughter me? Well, guess what - POW! - 'The Lord reigns forever.' And ya wanna know what else? - ZAP! - 'He has established His throne for judgment.' Take THAT!" Saul is instantly obliterated. Then I see Absalom ready to catapult a fiery canon into his father's cavernous hide-out, only to be subdued when David says to him, "Son, let me tell you something. 'The Lord is King ...'" Uncomfortable, Absalom would retreat, shouting over his shoulder as he did, "Um, good talk, Dad, but I hear Mom calling." And off he'd go.
I obviously don't mean that to sound as sacrilegious as it probably does. Those images, though, really do help me to think about my own enemies. Sure, there aren't armies after me, and I don't even have a son, but I am in a battle. Ephesians 6:2 describes it in detail.
Paul writes, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
My enemies, then, aren't "flesh and blood" but discontentment, impatience, lack of discipline, slothfulness, selfishness, vanity, pride, and a thousand others. Realizing this, cries like David's "How long will my enemy triumph over me?" had a whole new resonance.
"I DO have enemies," I thought, bizarrely happy that my kinship with the Israelite king was complete.
And thanks to him, I also know how to make them "turn back." Like David, "I will sing praise to Your name," and just as they did for him, so will "My enemies turn back. They stumble and perish before You." Discontentment can't live in a land where there's full awareness of God's bountiful blessings; impatience can't abide the knowledge that God's "way is perfect."
And that reminder alone is "perfect."
Sorta like the Hollywood ending of every chick flick I've ever (begrudgingly) seen.
(By the way, this was not the post I had in mind when I posted this. That one's still to come. Maybe.)
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
"Yeah, that's always been the thing in your way ..."
First, we tend to dress alike at theme parks. Go ahead and poke fun. It's nothing we haven't heard before, but I'm telling you, matching shirts in coordinating colors make it so much easier to find each other in uncontrolled crowds.
Plus, between my sister and all of my cousins, there's practically a football team full of children whenever we're all together, so personalized gear helps us each to keep track of who's who. After all, were it not for the names emblazoned across our Beefy-Tees, there'd be absolutely no telling me from my wafer-thin, model-tall, blonde-headed cousin Lori. As you can see from the picture to the left, the family resemblance is uncanny (I hope you're picking up on my sarcasm, because I'm laying it on pretty thick).Secondly, we're probably just a tad too excited about University of Kentucky sports. This, I don't apologize for or feel compelled to defend.
Finally, we tend to talk in movie lines. How this started, I don't know. I do know, however, that we can have entire, meaningful conversations without expressing a single, original thought. For instance, the birthday song we sing to each other? Totally ripped off from the "Ache in Every Stake" episode (my favorite!) of the Three Stooges (if you're pressed for time, start watching at 17:13). Whenever Mom, Daddy, or Sissy asks me how I'm feeling, I'll respond, "Much better, Deah," mimicking Judith Ivey as Aunt Blanche in the film adaptation of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, and I have not heard my father say the word "Yes," since the premiere of Napoleon Dynamite. Instead? He borrows Pedro's "chess." In case you're wondering, that doesn't get old AT ALL (again with the sarcasm).
We say these things without even thinking about them. They're automatic - like when an Auburn fan, no matter where he is, spots another Tiger and nods an involuntary "War Eagle."
I realized last nite that I often do something similar with my Bible reading. Once again, I was going over Psalm 40, a passage I've read probably as many times as I've told my mother "Much better, Deah," a passage I've been able to quote since Mr. Davis's 7th grade Bible class, a passage I can even sing a song to, but last nite's reading was anything but automatic.
I was led to the verse by a book I've been reading. Beth Moore's "Get Out of that Pit" is every bit as good as everything else she's ever written (and that's GOOD). I picked it up on my most recent trip to McKays, because lately I've been feeling a little "blue," and I don't mean Kentucky blue, either. I mean "a little anxious for no particular reason, a little sad that I should feel anxious at this age. You know, a little self-conscious anxiety resulting in non-specific sadness, a state that I call 'blue.'"
Beth Moore calls it being in a "pit." So did the psalmist. He wrote, "I waited patiently for the Lord ..."
Stop right there.
"Patiently"? He waited "PATIENTLY"?! In reading this verse for the umpteenth time, I suddenly realized, for the first time, how I get myself into these pits to begin with. Impatience. I am waiting every way BUT "patiently." As a result, I slip into a pit, because God hasn't given me what I want ... a job, for instance, or an iPhone (again, sarcasm) ... when I want it. My bootstrap response to His seeming inaction is to go into over-active mode. I strike out to make something happen on my own, but obviously, I'm powerless against the providence of a sovereign God, so I throw what amounts to a holy temper-tantrum ("God! I'm doing MY part; why aren't You doing YOURS?!") and wind up taking a self-imposed time-out smack dab in the middle of Pit Central.
That concept reminded me of another verse I know as well as I do the entire script of Annie (the 1982 Aileen Quinn classic, NOT the later Disney remake so insufferable that I won't even dignify it by adding an IMDB link; incidentally, I DO own the "Special Anniversary Edition DVD").
"Be still and know that I am God." - Psalm 46:10
Hold up. Be WHAT?
For one who prefers to be in perpetual motion, being still is just about as easy as being patient. Unlike the "patiently" thing, though, I can't pretend that this is the first time I've wrestled with God's command to "Be still." Sensing God's periods of seeming inaction, I have a tendency to try and "take over." My admittedly flawed line of thinking goes like this: "You know, He's been holding the reigns for awhile now. He's probably just tired or busy helping someone else out these days. The least I can do is drive through the night."
It's almost as if I see God and I as partners in a relay race. He's just handed me the baton, so I can take the next leg, while He takes a breather on the sidelines. One hand clutches His heaving chest and the other holds a gallon of Gatorade. Though that image sounds really sacrilegious, I leave it in for no other reason than to illustrate to myself how ludicrous my misguided idea is. I know that intellectually, of course. As I stand on the precipice of a pit, however, that doesn't stop me from trying with all my might to make something happen that will keep me out of it. That, too, is ludicrous. Proverbs 16:9 puts it this way: "In his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps."
Philip Yancey talks about these ideas in his excellent book "Prayer," which I read earlier this year. Writes Yancey:
"'Be still and know that I am God.' The Latin imperative for 'be still' is vacate. As Simon Tugwell explains, 'God invites us to take a vacation, to stop being God for awhile and let Him be God' ... God is inviting us to take a break, to play truant. We can stop doing all those important things we have to do in our capacity as God and leave it to Him to be God ... To let God be God, of course, means climbing down from my own executive chair of control. I must uncreate the world I have so carefully fashioned, to further my ends and advance my cause."
Yancey's work probably resonates with me, because concepts like "vacation" and "truancy" are two that I can really get my arms around.
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Given that, why is it so hard for me to "be still"? To "wait patiently"? I wish I knew. I'm so thankful that God has shown me where I go wrong, and I'm trusting Him to fill me with the strength to obey His command to "be still." Maybe the solution is as simple as getting more specific in the whole vacation analogy. Clearly, I'm a visual learner, so maybe I'll finally learn the necessary lessons by giving myself a concrete image to imagine when I feel myself foolishly thinking I need to take over for my sovereign God. Instead of seeing myself in a pit, I should instead imagine being in a place where I won't want to do God's work (as if I could, anyway) - being indefinitely at Disney World or traveling cross country in an Airstream trailer or, maybe, it'll help to imagine myself on Nebali, "the name of the planet in a galaxy way, way, way ... way far away."
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