Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.
In my car the speedometer is on the right. On the left there’s a gauge I’ve never had in a car before. It shows how much power is either going out of the battery or going back into the battery. The people who created my all-electric car wanted to let drivers know what sort of driving used the most power and what sort of driving recovered the most power. With that information the driver could learn the best ways to drive to get the most out of their car.
Without that feedback from that gauge, given to me by the people who know it best (because they designed and built it), I would really have no idea how to use this car to the fullness of what the designer’s intended. With that gauge I do. Do I always drive it for maximum efficiency? No. Do I sometimes go 0-60 faster than a mid 80’s Corvette just because I can? Perhaps. But do I have to GUESS how to drive to get the most out of my car. Not at all!
And that, believe it or not, leads us back into today’s Psalm. In this Psalm, God, the designer and builder of the vehicle we call a human life, shares with us how to get the most out of this thing called life. God is going to “speak peace” to God’s people. God is telling us how to get real WHOLENESS out of this life we’ve been given. How to maximize LIFE in the body styles and model years that we’re each currently driving.
In this Psalm, God’s “salvation” is the very best advise on how to maximize the life you have been given straight from the designer and manufacturer. That advice is RIGHT there at our fingertips for those who “fear” God. This is not meant to be understood as the“fear” of a God who's just waiting to jump out and GETCHA. Here, fear is meant to describe the feeling of AWE at suddenly encountering the One who has designed each one of us from the atoms up! THIS “fear” is not being afraid, but instead how it feels to find ourselves in gobsmacking wonder as we hear first hand from the One who put each one of us together piece by piece! It is meant to describe the wide eyed, speechless, cavernous jaw drop we experience as we hear God tell us to our faces that each one of us has been wonderfully made!
Which is all the dramatic the way this Psalm chooses to give us a heads up and say, “Pay attention! THIS next bit is directly from the ONE who really knows!” And the ONE who really knows… KNOWS that it is in STEADFAST LOVE that we meet with FAITHFULNESS. It is in RIGHTEOUSNESS that we will find ourselves filled with the WHOLENESS of life. God knows… KNOWS better than ANY OTHER… that when we pass on God’s loving kindness to our neighbors and the world around us... THAT is the most faithful way to drive this life we’ve been given. Living this life as a vehicle to spread God’s loving kindness to the world is what following our manufacturer’s design for living looks like! And when you drive your life in THAT way, you'll see abundant life, for yourself, for others, and for the world just seeming to spring up from the ground, meet you in the street, and pour down on you from the skies!
God has given us these directions for living, not like some sort of sadistic sociopath who delights in tripping us up and sending us to hell. If that’s your god, then I’ve got to tell you, you’ve got a terrible god and that isn’t the God of Scripture, it isn’t the God of the Psalms, it isn’t the God of Jesus and it’s not the God of the Gospel. The real God...OUR God is the ONE who loved us into being and the ONE who wants us, more than anything else, to follow our manufacturer’s design recommendations… NOT to “GET US” when we don’t, but because the more we LIVE as we were designed to live, the MORE we get out of this thing called life we’ve been given! THAT’S the God we have! We have a God who freely shares with us how we were designed and made because our God WANTS us to live every second of our lives from starting line to finish with our gauge for abundant life completely maxed out the whole time!
THAT is what God wants for us and that is why God shows us, here in the Psalm and in countless other places, that the way to live our lives maxed out on abundance is to drive our lives on this road called "loving kindness", doing what is in the other’s best interest, having what the world would call “too much grace” for others, showing compassion, kindness, generosity and love to people along the way. Even to those who don't deserve it... Especially to those who don't deserve it! THAT is the road God wants us to drive. Not to “get us if we don’t” but so that we will know at the end of the road that we’ve really lived the life, God created us to live. Amen.
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