A Time For Selah

“Selah.” – Psalm 3:2, 4, 8

This feels like a time of disorientation and isolation, with event cancellations happening to unprecedented degrees and in unprecedented ways. It feels destabilizing having things that I thought for sure would happen just disappear, not knowing what to expect next week or three months down the line.

We’re cycling back through the Psalms, and it struck me on this reading that Psalm 3 has the highest density of selah’s of any chapter in the book (the next three runner-ups are Psalms 32 and 46, which have 3 in 11 verses, and Psalm 67, which has 2 in 7 verses). No one knows for sure what selah means, though scholars guess “pause, silence.” It is a word that occurs not in the text itself, but as a notation in the margin. In a way, this entire time is like one big selah in our lives: a pause, a stop, an interruption from some force outside of the script of our lives.

Why are there more selah’s in this psalm than any other? David wrote it during an unexpectedly disruptive time in his life, when he was forced to abandon all routine in the face of a rebellion led by his son. Perhaps in this time of uncertainty, David felt an even greater need to stop and meditate on words like these: “But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head… I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. I will not be afraid” (verses 3, 5-6). The word “sustain” here means “to lean upon, for rest and support.” David also says, “Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God!” (verse 7). Times of instability can bring into greater relief both what we lean upon in our lives, and what the cry and longing of our souls are before God. 

But selah is also a reminder of the importance of community. Eugene Peterson writes in his book Answering God, “Like detectives sifting through the clues we find Selah; from it we deduce not a crime but a community… Some of [these psalms] most certainly originated in solitude, and all of them have been continued in solitude. But in the form in which they come to us, the only form in which they come to us, and therefore in the way they serve as our school of prayer, they are the prayers of a community before God in worship… Selah directed people who were together in prayer to do something or other together. Our prayer book, by the time we get our hands on it, has all these liturgical scribbles in the margins. Biblically, we are not provided with a single prayer for private devotions. The community in prayer, not the individuals in prayer, is basic and primary.”

David was not in a time of life when he could gather as he was accustomed to with his community. But nevertheless, they walk alongside him together (2 Samuel 15), and this little word in the margin is a reminder that, especially in times of disorientation and instability, our existence as a community has not changed. When we cannot meet as we usually do, how can we still pray in chorus together? How is this all an opportunity to rediscover what community truly means, what our faith truly means together? The time when David walked the unexpected path was the time he remembered more than any other that he was not really alone.

Repentance

“But David’s heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done.’” – 2 Samuel 24:10

“Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” – Martin Luther, first of the Ninety-Five Theses

We hear about not just one, but two episodes of explicit sin in David’s life, and both times, his response is striking. After Nathan confronts him about the episode with Bathsheba, David’s first and only words are, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). He says the same first three words to God after doing the census. He does not make excuses. He does not blame others, or the demands of leadership. He does not point to norms within the surrounding culture. He doesn’t use passive language, or reframe his sin in nicer terms. He sees his sin nearly exclusively in the vertical dimension.

Repentance can be self-centered or God-centered. Self-centered repentance happens when we are sorry for the sin because of its consequences to us. Our main aim is to avoid punishment, to keep God happy so he will continue to give us what we want. The repentance itself becomes a form of self-atonement; the self-oriented misery or self-flagellation we experience becomes a reason we deserve to be forgiven. This kind of repentance becomes harder and harder as we come to rely more and more upon our own moral goodness for salvation and change.

God-centered repentance is sorry for the sin because it displeases and dishonors God. Its aim is to avoid anything contrary to God’s heart, anything that would keep us from tapping fully into the joy of our union with Christ. The repentance itself becomes a form of grief: and like the promise “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” there is close on its heels an experience of grace, a feeling that forgiveness is not earned through our own suffering, but received through Christ’s suffering. This kind of repentance happens more and more in our lives, in an ongoing and dynamic cycle: the more we see our sins, the more we experience grace, and the more aware of that precious grace we are, the more we’re able to drop our denials and self-defenses to admit the true dimensions of our sin.

When it says “David’s heart struck him,” the verb used is nakah, meaning “to slay or kill.” This is no mild word. This is not intellectual regret, or a calculating correction. David felt slain by his own heart. He was completely smitten by the realization of his sin, and he doesn’t go speak to Joab or the people: he speaks to God, against whom only he has sinned (Psalm 51:4). We see this word again in verse 17, when the angel strikes the people as a consequence of sin, and David offers himself instead. God doesn’t take him up on that, but years later there is one man who is “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4) for his people. We also read on the same day these words from Peter: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus” (Acts 3:19-20). May we experience God-centered repentance that leads to true change and times of refreshing within God’s presence.

Gentleness

“Your gentleness made me great.” – 2 Samuel 22:37

“Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent it is than force!” – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Is it easy for you to conceive of God as gentle? Perhaps that has to do with how much gentleness we ourselves have received, and I look back now with thankfulness for that in my life. I don’t have many early childhood memories, but nearly all of them are of gentle physical gestures: my dad holding me while walking in the dark of our living room at night, tucking me into bed. Dave, who is stronger than me in many ways, is someone I would describe as gentle in word and deed. I spent an extended year of training at Hopkins with an attending who was known for his gentle manner towards difficult patients. 

Gentleness is often considered synonymous with kindness, but they aren’t the same: if kindness describes our actions, gentleness gets more at the manner in which we act. If kindness is goodness in action, gentleness is more goodness in disposition. How we do what we do. When we handle something with care, we are making a statement about how valuable that item is to us, about its relative fragility compared with our relative power. We are choosing to wield our strength in a way that honors and understands the nature of what we’re dealing with, in a way that expresses grace, care, and love. In the New Testament, the word for gentleness, praytes, is often associated with meekness, as in “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:1). As Gayle Erwin writes, “When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus—born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death—I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about ‘winning the world.’ His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life.”

Strength in weakness. Greatness through gentleness. I have always loved that line of David’s, because it is an attribute of God we so rarely hear praised. God has been gentle with me: never forceful or harsh; every rebuke and encouragement bathed in the gentle love of his presence. When I acknowledge and receive that from Him, I am able to be gentle with myself. I am able to be gentle with others, to be more careful and less careless in how I treat this person for whom my gentle Savior died.

Ahithophel

“When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order and hanged himself.” – 2 Samuel 17:23

The extremes in Ahithophel’s life are a bit alarming. He goes from being esteemed by both David and Absalom as a god (“Now in those days the counsel that Ahithophel gave was as if one consulted the word of God,” 2 Samuel 16:23), to committing suicide once Absalom took Hushai’s advice over his. The truth was, Hushai’s advice was (intentionally) bad, and it would lead to Absalom’s death. Ahithophel had not lost his touch; he had it more than ever. Why go hang himself?

We don’t know for sure. Perhaps it was simply having idolized his high status and career success so much that it was unbearable to feel passed over. Ahithophel was David’s most valued counselor, and was specifically requested by Absalom at the start of his conspiracy (2 Samuel 15:12, 2 Chronicles 27:33): that is a kind of power that would have gone to anyone’s head. Sometimes the best way to identify idols in our lives is to see what affects us most when we don’t have it. How would I react if I were to lose my mind, my physical health, my ability to work, my status as a parent, my wealth? Would I be sad or completely destroyed, without any remaining sense of meaning or identity, unable to go on? 

But we also know that Ahithophel was the father of Eliam (2 Samuel 23:34), who in turn was the father of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:3)—a fact David was full-aware of, as it was the very first thing he learned about her. Eliam was one of the mighty men of David, as was Ahithophel’s son-in-law, Uriah. David had betrayed his closest counselor by violating his granddaughter and killing his son-in-law, a man who fought together with his own son. Perhaps this was why Ahithophel betrays David in turn by joining Absalom, proposes killing David himself (2 Samuel 17:2), and takes his life when he finds the conspiracy will likely fail. God had forgiven David, but perhaps Ahithophel had not. Are there ways we hold on to bitterness and a vengeful desire for our own justice in our lives?

There are faint echoes here of Judas, another man who betrayed a King only to hang himself. And just as we see the sovereignty of God in that situation, we see it here. When Ahithophel advises Absalom to publicly violate his father’s concubines, God uses that counsel to fulfill his word (“he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun,” 2 Samuel 14:11). But God also foils Ahithophel’s counsel to achieve his purposes (“the Lord ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel,” 2 Samuel 17:14). If anything, we learn that human thinking, even from the sagest man in the kingdom, is not enough. God’s power, his ways and thoughts, are higher than ours. Wisdom does not guarantee a righteous end. Ahithophel’s great-grandson Solomon would also be known for his wisdom and have to figure this truth out for himself. 

Let It Be

“Leave him alone, and let him curse.” – 2 Samuel 16:11

There are profound parallels between our Old and New Testament texts today. David does not fight Absalom, but leaves, weeping as he ascends the Mount of Olives, allowing Shimei to curse him (in a passage we’ve discussed before). Jesus also goes to the Mount of Olives in great distress, refuses to fight, and gives himself up to derision. In his book The Stature of Waiting, W. H. Vanstone notes how Jesus goes from “action,” a time marked by initiation and activity, to “passion,” a time marked by things being done to him and having no control. The turning point is when he allows himself to be handed over. “Jesus fulfills his vocation not in action only, but also in passion,” he writes. When he says “it is accomplished” (John 19:30), he is saying not only “I’ve done all I wanted to,” but also, “I have allowed to be done to me what needed to be done to me to fulfill my vocation.”

Our culture is preoccupied with staying in control. As people age, we talk about them “still being active,” as if that is the primary marker of worth or meaning. We assume that power is active, but we see that David and Jesus chose to not act, to instead be the recipient of others’ actions. They were not passive because they were lazy, or unaware of the situation, or even without power to retaliate. They were passive in the sense of intentionally yielding control, because they were actually more aware of the situation than usual: they saw more of its spiritual reality, and more of their own calling, than was apparent to others.

Sometimes we fulfill our vocation by allowing things to be done to us. We receive the erosion or limitations of our physical bodies. We receive the attitudes of our teenagers as they are separating from childhood. We receive the grief of seeing people leave a church or community when we have been called to stay. We may receive all manner of things during seasons of waiting or suffering. “The truth,” writes Nouwen, “is that my suffering for love is a much greater part of my life than my action.” The world says to be older is to gain more control, “but Jesus has a different version of maturity: it is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go” (John 21:18). These experiences are not only a normative part of the Christian life, but they can be the very living out of our vocation, the very following in the path of Jesus.

Covetousness

“I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?” – 2 Samuel 12:8-9

When God sends Nathan to confront David, Nathan talks about covetousness, something so often at the root of other sins. It’s no accident that it’s the one commandment Paul mentions in Romans 7:7 when he explains how the law reveals our sin. It is the last of the ten commandments, and in a way underlies those before it. And while the preceding commandments are perfunctory (“You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.”), God is strikingly specific when it comes to coveting: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Ex 20:17).

This is worth ruminating on, because I find that covetousness is essentially normalized by our consumeristic culture. Consumerism breeds covetousness. Consumerism is more than simply the consumption of goods; it is a worldview that tells us we must acquire ever more or ever better goods as a means to deserved self-gratification or self-actualization. It works best when we set our sights on something specific: it starts with generalized discontentment and moves towards specific envy.

It tells us marriage is about making ourselves happy, not sacrificially loving someone else. That sex is about self-gratification, not relational giving. That jobs are about self-glorification or earning esteem to feel good, not a sense of vocation or calling. That parenting is about having kids who fulfill your own ambitions or make you look good, not stewardship for God’s kingdom. That material possessions are about comfort or status, not experiencing God’s faithful provision. And so it is easy to feel discontent if we don’t have the spouse, sexual partner, parenting outcomes, or possessions that we want or feel we should have. It’s easy to covet what we see around us.

At heart, coveting is despising God’s word. We despise what he has given us, but we are also despising his invitation to ask him instead for what we want. Isn’t it interesting that God says, “And if this were too little, I would add to you much more”? Do we really believe that? Do we believe Jesus when he says, “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 5)? Asking takes vulnerability and trust. It forces us to examine our worldviews and confront the nature of our longings. It opens us to experiencing the love of our father God. It is far easier to simmer into discontentment or fall into envy. May God expose any covetousness or self-focused consumerism in our hearts, and lead us instead to see His goodness and long for His glory in our lives.

Let Me Hear Joy And Gladness

“So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.” – 2 Samuel 11:4

“Let me hear joy and gladness… Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.” – Psalm 51:8, 12

In this section of 2 Samuel, we see the horrific results of sexual sin in David’s life. And yet, in his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51, he does not mention sex at all. As one person wrote, “Why isn’t he crying out for sexual restraint? Why isn’t he praying for men to hold him accountable? Why isn’t he praying for protected eyes and sex-free thoughts? The reason is that he knows that sexual sin is a symptom, not the disease. People give way to sexual sin because they don’t have the fullness of joy and gladness in Christ. Their spirits are not steadfast and firm and established. They waver. They are enticed, and they give way because God does not have the place in our feelings and thoughts that he should.”

I don’t know how intentional this lack of mention of sex in Psalm 51 is, but it is interesting to read it as a response to sexual sin. Circumstantial accountability and other practical measures may be important, but that is not what David asks for—he asks for a renewed spirit. He asks for restored joy in his salvation. And something about that rings true to me. Pathological guilt is of limited help in combating sexual sin. Sometimes it isn’t even about sex at all, but rather anger, boredom, weariness, insecurity, or some other underlying issue. The battle at heart is a spiritual one, and the solution ultimately must be as well. We learn to fight sexual sin by learning to love God more. We cry out, let me hear your joy and gladness. We learn to hear by marinating ourselves in the Word, by seeing Jesus as so holy and precious to us that we hate anything that keeps us from seeing and following him better. In moments of struggle we cry out for the Holy Spirit to uphold us with a willing spirit.

I was reading Thomas Merton’s writings on solitude when I came across this unexpected passage: “One vitally important aspect of solitude is its intimate dependence on chastity… Nowhere is self-denial more important than in the area of sex, because this is the most difficult of all natural appetites to control and one whose undisciplined gratification completely blinds the human spirit to all interior light… self-control is not only desirable but altogether possible and it is essential for the contemplative life. It demands considerable effort, watchfulness, patience, humility and trust in Divine grace. But the very struggle for chastity teaches us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature, and this is an indispensable preparation for interior prayer. Furthermore, chastity is not possible without ascetic self-sacrifice in many other areas. It demands a certain amount of fasting, it requires a very temperate and well-ordered life, modesty, restraint of curiosity, moderation of one’s aggressivity, and many other virtues. Perfect chastity establishes one in a state of spiritual solitude, peace, tranquility, clarity, gentleness and joy in which one is fully disposed for meditation and contemplative prayer.”

Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5)—and while this refers to much more than sexual purity, that is certainly included. It’s interesting to consider this in light of Merton’s thoughts. It’s interesting to see how our conduct in this area of our lives bleeds so heavily, for good or ill, into other areas of our lives. If David’s story tells us anything, it is that we all can have these struggles. We all need to pray his prayer.

Pairing Of Psalms

“And David said to Michal, ‘It was before the Lord, who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord—and I will celebrate before the Lord.” – 2 Samuel 6:21

“Your procession is seen, O God… Awesome is God from his sanctuary, the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people.” – Psalm 68:24, 35

Have you ever wished you could know what was in someone’s mind, particularly during a moment of crisis or celebration? The Psalms give us a glimpse into David’s inner life: when he fought Goliath, he wrote: “you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.” When Saul tried to kill him: “O my strength, I will watch for you, for you, O God, are my fortress.” When he ate the holy bread while on the run from Saul: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” When he was so afraid of the king of Gash that he pretended to be insane: “when I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” When eighty-five priests were cut down because of him: “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.” When spies revealed his location to Saul: “the Lord is the upholder of my life.” Pairing the Psalms with the passages they explicitly or implicitly refer to brings out deeper meanings for both texts. Here is a list of generally-accepted pairings:

1 Sam 17 – Psalm 9

1 Sam 19 – Psalms 11, 59

1 Sam 21 – Psalms 34, 56 

1 Sam 22 – Psalms 17, 35, 52, 64, 140, 142

1 Sam 23 – Psalms 31, 54 

1 Sam 24 – Psalms 57, 58, 63

1 Sam 27 – Psalm 16, 141

2 Sam 6 – Psalm 68

2 Sam 10 – Psalms 20, 21

2 Sam 12 – Psalms 32, 33, 51, 103

2 Sam 15 – Psalm 3

2 Sam 16 – Psalm 7

2 Sam 17 – Psalms 4, 42, 43, 55, 62, 70, 71, 143, 144

2 Sam 22 – Psalms 18, 109

An Excellent Wife

“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.” – Proverbs 12:4

Most of us think a good deal about how to excel in parenting, in our careers, in housekeeping, in organizing events, in working out. How often do I think about what it means to be an excellent wife to my husband? My marriage matters the most for anything else I do: as Tim Keller says, “if your marriage is strong, you step out into the world in strength; if your marriage is weak, you step out into the world in weakness.” My parents always say, “the most important give you can give your children is a healthy marriage.” My marriage is also one my greatest callings in life: as Francis Chan writes, “Because I am crazy about Lisa, I want her to have a great life. But more than that, I want her to have a great eternity. I want her to look back at her life without regret. I want her to be confident that the time she spent on earth prepared her for heaven. Most importantly, I want her to hear God say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master’ (Matt. 25:23).”

I know these things, but sometimes the most important things are also the least urgent, the least vocal ones. My work and ministry ask me for things. My kids ask me for things. Dave does not go around asking me, “have you thought about me today? Have you prayed for me today? How are you preparing me for eternity?”

But Proverbs tells me that what I bring to Dave in my marriage will be evident over time. A crown is by nature external and visible. It proclaims and reflects the glory, identity, and worth of the person wearing it. In contrast, osteomyelitis is initially invisible and can take a long time to develop. But bones are meant to support and move the body; they are the very scaffolding of life, and when they become infected, fever, pain, fatigue, immobility and permanent damage results. 

The word “excellent” here is Hebrew chavil, most often translated “army.” It refers to a person of valor and strength, to forces in battle, which lends perhaps a more military connotation than would be apparent in the English reading. Crowns were often given after battle, as we see with David in 2 Samuel 12:30.

I am going to end up being one of two things for Dave: someone who battles with all my strength for his eternal good, who becomes his very crown, his reward and glory—or someone who saps his energy, cripples him for the fight, is a caries in his life. The contrast is drastic, but consider that there is not a middle option described here. I am living towards one or the other of these ends in some way every day in our marriage. I can think of couples who have been together a long time, where the wife has strengthened her husband, proclaimed his worth, and herself become more beautiful by it. I can also think of couples where the wife has immobilized and drained the life from her husband. Where are we on this spectrum? What does it mean for me to be an excellent wife today?

Stopping And Taking A Breath

“It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.” – Exodus 31:17

We took Ellie and Eric back to their old swim instructor this past weekend, because something looked off when Ellie swam the 50-yard butterfly at her last meet. Her head was coming up at a strange angle, and while it is the most tiring stroke, she seemed to struggle more than usual. Janet, their instructor, did comment on Ellie’s head position—she needs to get her head down and deep, so her legs rise up and drag less; her chin should not tilt up so much for a breath—but Ellie had a hard time getting it. Then Janet took Ellie’s hands in hers while they faced each other in the water. She moved their hands together under the water, in some way I couldn’t see. But the next length Ellie swam, she got it. She had better rhythm. Janet told me later Ellie was drawing her hands down closer to her hips on a breathing stroke as compared with a non-breathing stroke; adjusting this gave her what she needed to breathe easier.

This section in Exodus 31:12-17 segues well with the sermon on Sabbath. It strikes me here that God speaks about the Sabbath like he speaks about circumcision: it is a sign of the covenant, a sign that we are set apart for God. It is living out with material time the spiritual truth that we belong not to this world and its pursuits but most of all to a God who keeps us. He speaks of his own rest on the seventh day as his sign to us, and describes the purpose of that seventh day with two words: “rested” and “refreshed.” “Rested” is Hebrew shabath, which as Dean mentioned, literally means “to cease.” 

“Refreshed” is Hebrew naphash, which literally means “to take a breath when weary.” It is only used 3 times in the Bible: here, again referring to the Sabbath in Exodus 31:17, and in an interesting story in 2 Samuel. David and his men were fleeing Absalom when someone from the house of Saul named Shimei came alongside them: “So David and his men went on the road, while Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him and cursed as he went and threw stones at him and flung dust. And the king, and all the people who were with him, arrived weary at the Jordan. And there he refreshed himself” (2 Samuel 16:13-14).

The story then cuts to Absalom; this is all we know about what it felt like for David to arrive at the end of that road: he was able to take a breath, to naphash. One can hardly imagine what that breath was like, after a journey like that. I think about Ellie, moving through the water. If you think about it, breathing is incredibly inconvenient for a swimmer; it slows them down so much. But Ellie has to come up to breathe. It is the sign of her humanness, of how she was created, that she’s not some other underwater creature. Taking that breath to her is life. For David, it was essential too, not just physically, but in every other way.

Learning how to cease and breathe, how to stop and take into ourselves what gives us renewed life, is a process. We’ve become convicted that weekly Sabbath is an important way, particularly in our culture here, to live out what we believe. But we’re still figuring it out. Stopping, not only on the outside but on the inside, is harder than it sounds, when all of our days are lived in endless loops of drop-offs and pick-ups and tasks. Breathing in what six different people need for refreshment, figuring out how to play and rest and serve together, takes some experimentation. We’re still finding our rhythm.  We’re like Ellie, learning to adjust our hands under the water of life so we can come up for the breath that we need and flow better through the water. God never said it would be easy, or that it would even come that naturally to us, but he has shown us what we need. He has given it as his very promise to us.