✙ Ps 69:19-29
When commenting on this little verse, Calvin reminds me that David "assures himself that the very thing which others considered as a ground for despair, would prove to him the cause of his salvation."
I like this. We are taught that meekness is bad—that we must put ourselves forward in order to succeed. Our culture does not teach us that patience and kindness and humility might do our spirit good. And yet the message of the scriptures we claim to believe in is quite different. It is not the proud that God takes note of, but the humble. After all, the proud need no salvation: they think they can save themselves. Those who are in pain and who know they're unable to save themselves—those who go unnoticed by the world—they are God's little ones, those whom God protects, the ones to whom Christ came, with whom Christ identified, and for whom Christ died.
If I strive, then I should strive not to be richer or more powerful, but weaker, meeker, and more dependent on the Creator who made me to nurture me; the Christ who redeemed me to lift me up when I fail; and the Spirit who proceeds from them both to guide me in the way I should go.
I like this. We are taught that meekness is bad—that we must put ourselves forward in order to succeed. Our culture does not teach us that patience and kindness and humility might do our spirit good. And yet the message of the scriptures we claim to believe in is quite different. It is not the proud that God takes note of, but the humble. After all, the proud need no salvation: they think they can save themselves. Those who are in pain and who know they're unable to save themselves—those who go unnoticed by the world—they are God's little ones, those whom God protects, the ones to whom Christ came, with whom Christ identified, and for whom Christ died.
If I strive, then I should strive not to be richer or more powerful, but weaker, meeker, and more dependent on the Creator who made me to nurture me; the Christ who redeemed me to lift me up when I fail; and the Spirit who proceeds from them both to guide me in the way I should go.
Make me one of your little ones, O God. But may I not wallow face-down in my helplessness, but cast my eyes upward to you, and know that you made me who I am and will in your own time complete what is lacking; in Jesus' Name, who taught me to pray: Our Father...
Drop thy still dews of quietness till all our strivings cease.
