Praise the Lord, o my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
Psalm 100:1
In Psalm 100, David doesn’t really pray, he just talks to himself. A more cultured way of saying this is, he meditates. Call it what you want, David models directing his thoughts towards God. BTW, the goal of biblical meditation is not to relax or empty our mind, it is to fill our heart and mind (our soul) with the truth about God’s glorious nature and goodness.
Jesus > Plato: Twentieth-century scholar, Alfred North Whitehead, once suggested that Western thought is little more than “a series of footnotes on Plato.” Perhaps, but the bigger point is that the history of the world pivots around Christ’s claim to build a movement that will prevail over all.
Worth Noting: Like millions of others, I have been dialed into the course of Dorian. In addition to praying, I find myself marveling: 1) at winds that approach 200 mph; 2) that in spite of our best efforts, we cannot predict a storm’s course; and 3) that with just a word, Jesus calmed a storm. “Who is this man, that even the wind and rains obey him?” (Mt. 8:27)
New Word: I’m not seeing polyamory quite as often as I’m seeing pumpkin spice, but polyamory is surging. In fact, I suspect I’ve seen the word as many times in the last few weeks as in the last fifty years. (“What is Polyamory and Why is it Gaining in Popularity” Men’s Health, “Gaby Dunn on embracing her polyamorous bisexuality and why she loves ‘The Bachelor’” NBC News, “The Pros and Cons of Being in a Polyamorous Relationship,” InStyle, etc. etc.) What is polyamory? Or, to frame the real question, what – other than the next phase in the sexual revolution – is polyamory? pol·y·am·o·ry. /ˌpälēˈamərē/ noun the practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all the people involved.
Many Things Are Getting Better. While preparing for next week’s talk at The Forum, I was reminded of how many things are improving. Yes, yes, yes, I know that many things are unraveling. But we hear about those all the time. It’s worth reminding ourselves of how much is going right. There are many sources I could cite for this. I think Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton’s recent comments are as good as any:
- According to World Bank estimates, the number of people living on less than $1.90 per day, adjusted for international price differences, fell from 1.9 billion in 1981 to .77 billion in 2013. Income inequality across all persons in the world has fallen, too, driven to a large extent by China, but also by India. The world distribution of income has narrowed as erstwhile very poor people have moved from the bottom to something like the middle. Life expectancy has risen almost everywhere over the last 250 years, and especially over the last 60 years. There is no country in the world today where infant mortality is higher than it was in 1950. No country—not one.
And BTW, the Good Old Days Were Not as Good as Some Like to Think. Years ago, Will Rogers said, “Things aren’t what they used to be and probably never were.” Matt Ridley, an Oxford professor, sets this up by comparing our perception of the past with reality. He starts by asking us to imagine a better-off-than-average family living somewhere in Western Europe in 1800.
- The family is gathering around the hearth in the simple timber-framed house. Father reads aloud from the Bible while Mother prepares to dish out a stew of beef and onions. The baby boy is being comforted by one of his sisters and the eldest lad is pouring water from a pitcher into the earthenware mugs on the table. His elder sister is feeding the horse in the stable. Outside there is no noise of traffic, there are no drug dealers, and neither dioxins nor radioactive fall-out have been found in the cow’s milk. All is tranquil; a bird sings outside the window.
Ridley then writes:
- Oh please! Though this is one of the better-off families in the village, father’s Scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at 53—not helped by the wood smoke of the fire. (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be the chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbor’s lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to an orphanage. The stew is grey and gristly yet meat is a rare change from gruel; there is no fruit or salad at this season. It is eaten with a wooden spoon from a wooden bowl. Candles cost too much, so firelight is all there is to see by. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture, or heard a piano. School is a few years of dull Latin … Father visited the city once, but the travel cost him a week’s wages and the others have never traveled more than fifteen miles from home. Each daughter owns two wool dresses, two linen shirts and one pair of shoes. Father’s jacket cost him a month’s wages but is now infested with lice. The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor. As for the bird outside the window, tomorrow it will be trapped and eaten by the boy.
Prayer Requests: In addition to prayer support for the many struggling after Dorian – and the tens of thousands who are showing up to help – please pray for churches as they settle into a new ministry year. Old programs will be starting back up, and new ones launching. This weekend at Christ Church, we’ll be starting the Fall sermon series, and launching Rev 7:9, a service focused on serving second-generation Hispanics in Highwood. Also, I would appreciate prayers for my talk at Monday night’s Forum, a men’s event being held at a local sports bar.
Closing Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, let me seek you by desiring you, and let me desire you by seeking you; let me find you by loving you, and love you in finding you. I confess, Lord, with thanksgiving, that you have made me in your image, so that I can remember you, think of you, and love you. But that image is so worn and blotted out by faults, and darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do that for which it was made, unless you renew and refashion it. Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height, for my understanding is no way equal to that, but I do desire to understand a little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves. I do not seek to understand so that I can believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I believe that unless I do believe, I shall not understand. Amen. -Anselm (1033-1109)