“You laid
down your commandments, that we should fully keep them. Oh, that my ways were made so direct that I
might keep your statutes!” (Psalm 119:4-5)
And thus it
is that on Wednesday mornings, during the monthly cycle of psalms, we plod
through the interminable Psalm 119, its 176 verses broken into sections of
eight. In one sense, I’ve always thought
that the two verses quoted above summarize the entire psalm. We praise God for his instruction and
commands, laid down in the Jewish Torah
(what we call the Old Testament). We
praise God for his guidance. And at the
same time, we are tempted to despair because the twists and turns of life seem to
conspire against us actually keeping those clear commands.
So, are we
caught in a Catch 22 of God’s making, or are we just hopeless? No and no.
We need ideals in our life. We
need to look up at the stars in the night sky that we cannot touch, but which
guide us in the direction we need to go.
God lays before us the Ideal. And
when we read the directions wrong and get lost, Jesus stands outside our door,
always inviting us to open ourselves to his truth, and love. The door has no outside latch. But he will be there for as long as it takes,
in this life or the next, until we finally open the door.
The image is of a 19th century painting by William Holman Hunt called "The Light of the World." Notice that the door that Jesus is knocking on has no outside latch.
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