Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-051 Sunday 16 Mar 2003

Reading: Psalm 1 – Two Ways, One Choice

Picture the loveliest tree you have ever seen. Do not analyse it; just stand before it and enjoy it.

This psalm stands as a doorway to the whole psalter. The light is calm and clear, doubts and subtleties are absent; the colours are black and white.

Dwell on the pictures of the fruitful tree and wind-blown chaff. At the centre of a godly life is delight in the Law of the Lord, as elaborated in Psalm 19, and in incomparable detail in Psalm 119; this is what will make a person truly blessed and happy. It is probable that this Psalm 1 was used to socialise the young into the right way – alternatives are clearly spelled out and a choice is implicitly demanded. The editor of the psalms knows that in his book are many more tortured songs – when the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper and there is no resolution in sight. But these polarities are where we begin – and where we end.(John 3:16)

The career of Lot (Gen 13 – 19) pictures graphically the alternative choice, culminating in a dreadful result. The first word and last word of the psalm are, as the New Testament shows, ultimately as far apart as heaven and hell. The judgement is not arbitrary, as the word ‘therefore’ indicates (v 5). And the fatal choice can only be seen clearly in retrospect: ‘Nearly they stood who fall; themselves as they look back, see always in the track, the one false step, where all, even yet, by lightest swerve, of foot not yet enslaved, by smallest tremor of the smallest nerve, might have been saved’*.

The psalmist begs us to enter into joy by an attentive, deliberate, persistent orientation of trained desire and directed contemplation to God, our Maker’s instructions. Why will you not be _happy_?

Do your use of money, your marriage, your career choices, your ambition, reveal where your _delight_ truly lies? Is your daily discipleship fuelled by delight?

* CS Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (Fount)

– Howard Peskett

Copyright Scripture Union, 2003, Encounter with God

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