March 14, 2007

Step 3: . We made a decision to turn our life and will over to the care of God.

Scripture reading for today: Psalm 14 and 15, Proverbs 7

During my year of decision, I came across this: Obey my commands and live! Guard my instructions as you guard your own eyes.” Proverbs 7:2 NLT And I thought – I don’t have a clue how to do this. Some days my eyes would droop with boredom as a read scripture. (Sorry. It’s true.) I didn’t get a lot of what it meant. I had very little historical background. I was kind of wandering around in my own wilderness experience. So I decided to change up my routine. Let me show you what I mean. I had always been a voracious reader. But during this year, I decided that reading about scripture might be cheating – so I decided to limit my studies simply to scripture. (I don’t necessarily recommend this. But I needed to do this for me – because I’m a big cheater and I might disengage my brain and just decide some expert knows best.) This proved to be not very simple. But I did it. On any given day, I might have come across this Psalm.

O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God! Restore the sparkle in my eyes, or I will die. Don’t let my enemies gloat, saying, “We have defeated him!” Don’t let them rejoice at my downfall. But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me. Psalm 13

Then I’d whip out my school supplies and take notes. I’d ask myself – what can even a dummy like you deduce from this text? So here’s what I might have written about Psalm 13.
13:1 I’m not alone in this feeling of isolation I have. Even a guy who got his writings in the bible asked this kind of question. I wonder if this means that God doesn’t mind it if we’re honest with him. Hmmmm…it has to mean that, or else God clearly could have edited this out. Teresa’s take away: I need to start getting more honest with God.

13:2 My notes say this is from David. I remember him. He was the giant killer. Goodness! I look him up in my concordance, read all about him and find out that scripture says he’s a man after God’s own heart – God loved David. He was also a murderer, adulterer, and apparently a very poor parent. This totally blows my mind. I don’t get this. How can such a messy dude be so loved by God? This is more than I can process. I’m going to ask someone about this…
13:3 David thinks God can restore sparkle. I thought that was the job of a good anti-depressant!

13:4 What a human guy! Even this king worried about what others thought. He had enemies. He didn’t want to be put in a position of shame. I get that. I’m still wondering though, how God could love him.

13:5 I’m noticing a pattern. I saw this in Lamentations too. These guys poor out their guts, but them seem to always circle their wagons back to this point – I trust in your unfailing love. I wonder if this is more of a decision than a firmly held belief. It seems like to me that these guys really wrestle with fear, and anxiety, and a sense of God being far away – but they keep coming back to a decision to believe that God is who He says he is. I don’t know why this makes me feel better about myself, but it does.

Then off I would go. There was laundry to do. A difficult relationship to navigate. Babies to feed. My coach to call.

Thought for today: What school supplies would you need in order to commit to the process of investigating God?

Thought for tomorrow: I’m begging you. Dig. Think. Ask. Ponder. Practice. Get coaching. You can do it.

March 14
Teresa McBean