Psalm 1

Psalm 1

Charles Wesley wrote the hymn O for a thousand tongues in 1739 on the anniversary of his conversion experience. It was published in the first collection of Methodist hymns in 1780 where it was number one, and for two centuries it was number one in every Methodist hymnbook since then until Hymns and Psalms thought better. It’s rather hard to argue that a hymnbook, especially a Methodist hymnbook, is anything other a collection about “my great Redeemer’s praise” and “the triumphs of his grace”.

Psalm 1 serves a similar purpose as the gateway the psalms, the hymnbook of the people of Israel, and it too sets the tone for all that follows: that is, a focus upon God, and all of God’s good gifts. However, there’s always a however, and it’s a big however, the psalm really doesn’t match up with the way that many of us experience the world. The psalm seems to be offering an either/or which feels to many of us like a false promise. We all know that following God does not mean that only good things happen to us, and following God does not mean that we will find prosperity. Equally, we know that the wicked are not always punished on earth – and we have to wait to find out what happens elsewhere. If you need any confirmation that there is sometimes a disparity between our faith and our fortune, you need only read the book of Job. Someone asked C.S. Lewis, "Why do the righteous suffer?"

"Why not?" he replied. "They're the only ones who can take it."

It seems as if our experience might be at odds with Psalm 1. Many of us do not believe that being faithful always brings only goodness and prosperity, and the wicked always get what they deserve, what can it say to us? One possibility is that the psalm might be suggesting that everything is about the afterlife, and our goodness and prosperity will come in the afterlife, while others find the opposite of goodness and prosperity, but when this psalm was written people didn’t have that kind of understanding of the afterlife, so that cannot be the answer. It might be that the psalm is basically some kind of a spiritual metaphor, suggesting that those who are faithful will always be happy in their hearts, even if things are wrong around them. The problem with that is that it would mean that God doesn’t care about what happens to us and whatever befalls us in life, so I don’t believe that can be the answer.

God, I am sure, is deeply concerned with how we spend our lives. God cares, and we can choose to take into our hearts God’s precious will for us, and allow God to use us in the unfolding purposes of God’s work. Or we can opt out, as if God were not active and not caring. Psalm 1 is a reminder that God wants us to opt in, and if we opt in God is with us and for us. Even if the circumstances of our lives, of the world around us, leave much to be desired, God is at work, recruiting us to help God, to work with God, empowering us to take our part in showing that the goodness of God is planted more deeply than all that is wrong.

A friend of mine talked to me about his addiction to alcohol. After six months sober, someone asked him if his next goal was another six months. He was quite horrified by that, and gently pointed out that his goal was always and only to go one more day. For him the choice was very clear, but the choices can be more complex in other situations. Psalm 1 doesn’t give simple answers to complex questions, but it does remind us to take our cues for living from our understanding of who God is, and in what God wants for God’s people. Delighting in God – enjoying God as the Westminster Catechism puts it – is a dynamic process that continually informs our choices, turns us towards good, and roots us in God’s grace and God’s blessing. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Out of the underground darkness, and out of the dark forbidding soil, the pure white lilies grow.

Out of the black and murky clouds, descends the stainless snow.

Out of the crawling earth-bound caterpillar, a butterfly is born.

Out of the somber shrouded night, comes a golden dawn.

Out of the humiliation, nails, the spear, the cross, comes resurrection, redemption, and a crown.