Yearly Archives: 2013

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“Seek God, not happiness,” this is the fundamental rule of all meditation.  If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness:  that is its promise.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p. 84

I am just working on completing my sermon for this week.  I’ve chosen to do a few sermons on the Psalms over the summer.

Choosing passages to preach on is always fun.  This time around I chose to find Psalms that weren’t the usual ones we read – like Psalm 23 (Good Shepherd), Psalm 51 (Create in me a clean heart), etc.  Last week was Psalm 16, this week is Psalm 102. 

As I have been preparing, I am struck with the context of the Psalms.  I’ve always read each Psalm as a separate thing – sort of just dropped in.  There was no rhyme or reason to their placement!

WRONG!

As I read Psalm 102 I am reminded that the Psalms (150 0f them) are made up of five books.  You don’t form books unless there is a theme for the book.  Psalm 102 is part of the fourth book.  The first Psalm in each book tends to lay out a bit of the theme for the book.  I preached on Psalm 90 a few years ago (the first Psalm in this “Book”) – one of those fascinating Psalms!  From it I found the following thoughts:

• Surprise me with your love
• Give me as many good days as bad days
• Show me what you are doing
• Captivate me with your majesty
• Make my work meaningful

Now as I come to Psalm 102, I took a look at 101 and 103.  101 talks of personal piety and purity.  103 talks of healing of diseases and forgiveness of sin. 

So, take a look at Psalm 102 and guess what is found there.  The title for the Psalm will give you some idea!

Dallas Willard wrote and impacted many lives, mine own included.  He died May 8, 2013.

In the latest issue of Christianity Today, July/August 2013, John Ortberg gives his own sense of Willard’s impact. 

Perhaps it is the way that Dallas would just turn a phrase or use a short sentence to pull meaning out of the “air”, so to speak.  Or the way he simply made Christianity make sense, more than any of the alternatives that you might run across.

His first book that seemed to strike the church community, The Divine Conspiracy (he also wrote many other books!), was on the Sermon on the Mount.  Simple and profound words, but both Jesus and Willard!!

And so, I loved reading some of the definitions that Ortberg attributes to Dallas Willard.  Here are a few of those:

• Beauty:  Goodness made manifest to the senses.
• Disciple:  Anyone whose ultimate goal is to live as Jesus would live if he were in their place.
• Reality:  What  you can count on
• Pain:  What you experience when you bump into reality.

I stood with a 20 something yesterday and said that the best is the enemy of the best.  We bantered about that for a while.

The beginning rebuttal was that the good is the enemy of the best.  I totally understand that idea.  We live in a society where “the good” is not as defined in ancient days.  For us, the good is just a way of saying, “getting by.”  By implication we mean that we are doing a lot less than God would require.  But we are able to maintain some sense of equilibrium and willingly let this be sufficient for our lives.

Of course, when we are able to push past “the good,” we often find greater fulfilment in life.  “Push past” is the operative phrase, or in today’s jargon, “go to the next level.”  Unfortunately we are finding that going to the next level may be as much a step down as a step up.

Back to the best as the enemy of the best.  For those who have consistently striven for better, we are finding that we want more than competence for our lives.  In fact, some days we approach a new situation (for that is where the best is best demonstrated), and we find that we’ve “been there, done that, got the T shirt.”  Since we don’t need to do this over again for the sake of proving ourselves, why would we overdo ourselves to go to the “next level?”

And perhaps more importantly, have we really defined “the best” properly?  What if the best is being unorganized?  What if the best is just living with other people?  What if the best looks like failure?

What if the best is really a mix of giftings amongst a group of people where we spur each other on to love and good deeds, but don’t demand that all our love and good deeds look the same?  What if we really are here to glorify God (let others peak into who God is and just enjoy God ourselves), to love others and to know when that is the best we can do?

Your thoughts as I cogitate (a great little word that just means to thing about) on this idea would be appreciated.