THE LIFE OF BELOVEDNESS
This Advent season we're going to be celebrating the birth of Jesus by singing Christmas songs and by contemplating Psalm 139 together.
Psalm 139 is a unique psalm.
Few places in Scripture give such close attention to the nature of God's relationship with us. We are often admonished to consider the love of the Lord, but here we see what that looks like. And so we encounter God's thoughts toward us, His knowledge and love for us, in detail. And this carries significant implications for how we think about God and how we live as His people.
Psalm 139 also includes one of the most jarring theme shifts anywhere in the Psalter. Verses 19-22 seem to come out of nowhere. They're practically embarrassing, a stain on what is otherwise a lovely collection of thoughts. But we'll consider their function in the psalm and see what the Spirit is up to. It doesn't pay to too quickly right off oddities in the Bible. "There's (always) gold in them-there hills."
Enjoy Psalm 139 all week.
Since we're going to be in Psalm 139 on Sundays, let me invite you to consider meditating on this psalm during the week too. This will deepen your appreciation for the psalm, and its influence on your mind and heart.
Read Psalm 139 repeatedly--at least Saturday and Sunday. Memorize sections that feel especially significant to you. (Memorizing the entire psalm is doable for many of us too.) Memorization, as slow and tedious as it can sometimes feel, is perhaps the quickest way to astonishing revelations. You work at it for a few days, a week or more, and then suddenly the meat falls off the bone and you're laid low like the prophets of old, beholding the glory of the Lord.
Our Prayer
The apostle Paul prays an extraordinary six-verse long prayer in Ephesians 3:15-21. And the high point of that prayer is that, by the help of the Spirit, "you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." It's hard to overstate how extraordinary this prayer is.
Paul sees that the answer to all we lack or feel we lack will only be found through an experience of God's presence. And the way "into" that experience of a fullness that only God gives is through contemplating the love of Christ together.
So, beloved, contemplate the love of Christ. And let's do this together this Advent season, using Psalm 139. And let's share what we find. Perhaps you see the breadth of His love, and I see the length of it, and our friends experience the height or the depth of it. And so we all take a step deeper into the life of belovedness God invites us to know with Him.
Let Ephesians 3:15-21 be our prayer this month. And consider focussing on Psalm 139 in your contemplation of God's love in Scripture.
Photo by Madhu Shesharam on Unsplash
