Autumn is a very welcomed and refreshing time of the year, particularly here in South Korea where we just finished the hottest summer on record. I am welcoming the cool breezes in the evening and paint brush strokes of oranges, golds, yellows and browns. It's an added bonus that my husband and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary amidst the fall splendor.

September always brings reflection for me. It is like an early thanksgiving. Here are 10 things I am grateful for and/or looking forward to over the coming months. 

1. Our 20th Wedding Anniversary.  It is a double anniversary because it always represents 20 years living in South Korea.  I wouldn't have imagined 20 years when I first got here, but I have more than lived it now!
 
2. Hot mugs of beverage.  Tea. Hot chocolate. Hot Cider. Mulled wine. . . I could go on.  These are best enjoyed, of course, with a book. . . on a porch on a fall afternoon.

3. New Books, of course! Book girl by Sarah Clarkson arrived just the other day. I am also interested in reading Anne Bogel’s charming and winsome I’d Rather Be Reading. Might I suggest either as an ideal read for an autumn day?
 
4. Back to school. It's a new semester for this English language professor. New beginnings, new students, new school supplies, new pages to be turned on brand new books. And I should mention that I love encouraging my students to pick a book and read it just for the pleasure. New beginnings, and new routines. LOVE it.
 
5. Autumn sweaters and sweatshirts. In fact, I was just thinking about pulling on a big, warm sweater and grabbing that warm beverage to sit outside this morning.
 
6. Long walks. Autumn walks without the heat and humidity give me time to clear my head, to ponder what I’m teaching or writing, and to enjoy the fresh air.  Throw in crunchy leaves, and I’m especially thrilled.  I loved this when the boys were little and I love it still now.
 
7. Apples, peaches, pumpkins, autumn harvest. This area we live in in South Korea is blessed with great apples, stunning peaches, and amazing pumpkins.  I love the fresh fruit, but this is the time to enjoy an apple, peach, or pumpkin pie. This, of course, should be done on a day when I am not teaching or writing. A creative baking day to get all my own creativity flowing.

I also love the fall displays. I love the way pumpkins appear on front stoops and entrances to store fronts. A hot drink, a warm sweater, a porch with pumpkins, and a book.  Ahhh!
 
8. Early sunsets. This time of year, I love watching darkness crawl in earlier and earlier each evening, and likewise, I love the way the changing light makes these early sunsets more orange, somehow smokier. Darker evenings have always felt like prime reading time to me.
 
9. Manuscript finished! For those of you who have been cheering me on, I have finished an Advent Book that goes through the named trees in the Bible. I'm excited about finding some beta readers (message me or email me if you are interested) and working with my illustrator. I also took the advice of Hope Writers and will work on making this a printed book.
 
10. The Great Slowing. My way of being, on my best days, is slow and deliberate, and fall is a season of intention. I am slowing, reflecting, and enjoying.
Just writing this list gave me joy. I cannot wait for that first crack of air cool enough for me to turn back around and get my cozy sweater and sit outside with a book.  Oh, autumn, I do love you.
 
Thanksgiving is always words fitly spoken.

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.              Proverbs 25:11(NRSV)

Are you interested in Hope Writers? Check this webinar out!

https://www.hopewriters.com/a/10210/L2GbuERH

Hope Writers has been a wealth of information and support while I have been teaching and writing. They only open the doors twice a year so you won’t have another chance to join until next year. If you’ve dreamed about writing a book, growing a blog, or just getting your words from out of your head and onto the screen, this is the member community for you.

Click here for general information:

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Click here to learn more and join today! 

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Are you interested in an early Advent reflection from my book? Please sign up for the mailing list on this site and I will send it to you.

Grace and peace beautiful people!

Dear Mid-Life 40 something Birthday person (mainly me) but a few others including Wanda, Sumitra, Ann, Elizabeth, and others,

Happy Birthday! When you blow out your candles ponder over these things and whatever else your heart tells you to focus on. 

40-something. You’re about half way through life, old BraveHeart. Half way.

So let’s live backwards from your 90th birthday cake. We should always Live backward from the end goal. Look at who’s in the room singing off tune on your 90th birthday — and who are you making room for right now?

I want to be the weathered woman of 9 decades, still excited about life and God and grace, hunched over her cake, looking around a room of babies slung on hips and grinning teenagers and the gathering of the generations. I hope they sing old hymns and new style praise songs. I want to sing Amazing Grace to this group and recite Psalm 23 by heart and count our blessings together and eat cake.

I envision a rising of accents and the richness of skin colours and a poverty of spirit that knows the luckiness of Jesus-grace, and I hear the raucous of a room of the gloriously rowdy and live your life backwards from that last birthday cake. (Ann Voskamp)


What are my priorities that will be celebrated at this 90th birthday party? These are the things I’m focusing on now. My principles for this 90 year life.

1. Keep young people around. Especially the little people. They see things you are bound to miss without them.  Thank you Jordan for focusing on love, hugs, kisses, fun and sweetness.  Making a small person one of your greatest priorities makes your life great.

2. Read! Read the Bible. Reread books that touched you when you were younger. Read things that show you how to be a more compassionate human being. Read up on a new interest area. Learn something new. 

3. Stay in love. I’m holding on to this with all my life. Stay in touch, stay in truth and grace, and stay in the Story and, above all else: stay in love. Life is too short to move on to anything else. And mid-life is flat-out begging you: Risk it all. Risk large, risk now, risk your heart, risk for what ultimately matters.

Go back to school. Go reconcile. Go make it right. Invest in a dream that terrifies you. Do the hard thing that terrifies you. Start a business, a class, a soup kitchen, a friendship, a dinner club, a memoir, a church, a marathon, a family. Just start. Start over.
​
4. You life is art. Rake the risk and create! Risk is your friend who walks with you where you want to go. Risk is the friend who knows the way to where you want to go. Enjoy risk’s company.

5. Live into something bigger than you, that will require more than you, that will require faith and hope and miracles and God.Why waste your one life on any one’s small box?
Believe it:

6. Our God is a good God. Pray to Him. Make your life a prayer.Make your work your worship, make your days your doxology, make your life your liturgy, and make Christ your only King. Your work may burn up or cause you to burn out, but the prayers enfolded into the stacks of laundry, the stirred soup, the stairs swept — they will survive fire.

7. The cure to anxiety and an overwhelmed life begins with a daily overdose of Scripture. (Keep trying to memorize it)
Leave a Bible open to the Psalms by the sink, on the desk, at the table, eat His book every time you eat because the truth is: Stay in His Story to stay walking on waves.

What you focus on — is what you become like.
What you focus on — is what you become like.
Focus on good — and you’ll see more good everywhere to focus on.

8. Give more grace than advice.

9. You integrity is you only legacy. Hunger for integrity more than popularity, celebrity, or prosperity, — because your integrity is your only legacy.

10. Being broken is good. It keeps you soft and open and things can grow in soft and open spaces.

Let the rains come down into the soil of your heart, let whatever needs to rain simply come, and grow whatever He needs to grow, however He needs to grow it, because He reigns and knows what is best, and in our tender surrender, the glory of our God wins.

There may be another 40-something years left, there may only be another 16,425 days left.

And honestly? As many days, as moments, between here and 90, or as many remain?
​
At this 90-something party, I want to eat the cake of amazing grace. Pay attention to God. Pay attention to my family. Worship God in all that I do.
Be grateful, live given, show grit. 

I am a part of that epic story just as you are a part of that epic story! Your life will be celebrated in glory because you were created and imagined by a loving, beautiful, glorious Savior who cares for you. (Psalm 139:23-24)

Have a piece of that amazing grace cake!

​Lately I've been confronted with broken things. A broken door. A broken clock. A broken coffee mug that shattered on the trip from the dishwasher to the cabinet. 
 
The door stiill opens and closes, it only needs a new handle. The mug was a goner, but not an heirloom. But I can't quite escape the feeling that I'm in the vortex of some invisible wind that is swirling wildly around me. And breaking things apart...
 
"Things fall apart," Irish poet Yeats wrote, "the centre cannot hold." I feel his pain, but I challenge his conclusion. I believe the center can hold, and does. The center holds because The Beautiful Son is at the center of everything, holding all things together: "For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:16-17, NASB)
 
Circumstances at the edges are perilous, yes. Things are broken. They crash and fall and shatter. But the center is strong. The center holds. Or better, it is held.
 
The challenge is to celebrate the mending, not mourn the pieces. To be thankful for the repairs, and not lament (at least not for long) the breaking. The challenge is to believe--even before things are put right--that rightness is near and possible...that it will come. Broken things will be mended: one day even our own hearts' cracks and fault lines will be made flawlessly whole again , and stronger for it.
 
Because my God loves broken things. Even me. He redeems broken things! We are mosaics in Christ!
 
"And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach--" (Colossians 1:21-22, NASB)

An interesting development has occurred with my feet this semester.  Too much standing, exercising, mothering, and just plain, being on my feet has not been good. I have plantar fasciitis, where the heel of my right foot feels like a hot rock whenever I stand up. I am taking Ibuprofen and doing my best to stay off my feet as much as it is possible. I’m occasionally doing simple exercises thanks to a friend’s advice, but generally I’m not moving.
 
This means I have to be still a lot of the time. I'm learning the power of standing still. I’m not that good at it but I’m trying.
 
Things I once could do with ease are not so easy now...climbing, running, leaping...I can see the movement clear enough, but my body doesn't always do as it's told. So I surrender grudgingly to "still" and curse my weakness; never fully graceful in motion, I'm even less so now.
 
What's more, the stillness of growing older asks me to go go deeper than muscle and bone.   
 
By now I'm expected to still my tongue and not let words fly fast and loose. To hush myself when I know just the phrase I wish to hurl, and where I'd like to aim it. I'm asked to hold my ground and not be swayed by whims or fads, or pushed beyond propriety or kindness. Sometimes I am able; sometimes I am not. But I have the power within me to be still. At my core there's a solid and steady center, fixed even when I flail and flash and fall.
 
A recent piece of sad news held a snippet of a poem I'd long forgotten: Robert Frost's lovely "The Master Speed." He wrote it for his daughter's wedding day, and it's most-oft quoted lines are the final ones: 
That life is only life forever more
together wing to wing and oar to oar.  
  
Those are lines full of sweeping motion. They're beautiful...but the ones that haunt my mind are these: 
And you were given this swiftness not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will.
But in the rush of everything to waste
That you may have the power of standing still."
 
Father who knit my cells together and who keeps my heart beating in metronome steady time, let me grow to love the power, the glorious power, of standing still in and resting strong in You.  
  
"Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:13-15)   

Amen. I just need to be still.

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness"  Psalm 29:2 KJV

This is a provocative phrase that sets two nouns that do not ordinarily hang out together, beauty and holiness, in company with the verb worship.  Worship, an energetic and all involving verb.

Beauty is splendor, grandeur, adornment. Life - core existence - spills over the containers of mere survival or utility. 

Holiness. An interior fire, a passion for living in and for God. A capacity for exuberance in the presence of God. In His presence there are springs deep within and around us which we drink and sing God.

It's life really. Beauty is the outside and holiness the inside of what is essentially the same thing. It is life God created and God blessed, life here and now. 

When we get glimpses of the intricate connections between everything we see and can't see, the usual metaphor is "heaven and earth". When we sense the pulse and surge of life within and around us, our spontaneous response is to worship.

Worship is the most soul-involving, reality-assimilating act available to human beings. We are most ourselves, our image-of-God selves, when we worship: "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness."

_________

Of course, the issue is that both beauty and holiness are in short supply. Beauty is commonly trivialized in our culture, reduced to pretty or nice, or it is mere decoration.

But beauty isn't an add-on. It is not an extra. Its not what we pay attention to when we break from reality. Beauty is fundamental. It is evidence of inherent wholeness and goodness of things. It is life in excess of what we can manage or make on our own. 

Beauty arrives through a sustained and adorational attentiveness to what is there: a rock, a flower, a bird, a face, a rustle in the trees, a storm crashing through the mountains.

When we are tired and our senses dull and our attention wavers, writers, singers, artists, all grab us and say, "Look, listen, feel! Embrace and respond to life within you and around you!" This is what the poet of Psalm 29 is doing.

"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver wrote these words and it adequately captures verse two.

If the fate of beauty in culture is to be trivialized, the fate of holiness is to be reduced to blandness. Many sectarian groups reduce life to behaviors and cliches that can be certified as safe. Goodness in a straitjacket if you will, truth drained of mystery, beauty reduced to platitudes or knickknacks. Ellen Glasgow had a wonderful line in her autobiography where she described her father, a Presbyterian elder full of rectitude and rigid with duty: "He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life ... never committed a pleasure."

Holiness is in wild opposition to all this banality and blandness. We are introduced to it through the stories of the burning bush in Midian, the mountain on fire at Sinai, the smoke and angel filled temple in Jerusalem. We find ourselves in the presence of God alive, with life far in excess of anything we imagined. This God-life cannot be domesticated or used: it can only be entered into on its own terms. Moses and Isaiah walked out of those stories on fire themselves, energized for lifelong, life-giving vocations. Holiness did not make God smaller so they could use God in convenient and manageable projects. It made those men larger.

Frederick Buechner took on the task of re-imagining holiness. He put the fire, the smoke, and the angels back into holiness and holy living. Leo Bebb in The Book of Bebb and Godric and Brendan, and hen with Jacob in The Son of Laughter, Buechner immersed us in convincing, contagious stories of holiness that exude life, stories of life giving, life enhancing, life-deepening holiness.

Here is the catch. Life, which is characterized by its modifier holiness as God's life and God-derived life, lavish and exuberant, beyond domestication and inaccessible to control, is mediated to us in beauty. Beauty.

Beauty is our sensory access to holiness. God reveals himself in creation and in Christ, in ways we can see and hear and touch and taste, in place and person. Beauty is the term we use for these hints of more. Hints of transcendence that show us there is more going on than what we can account for.

We need to rub our noses in the stuff of this world, inhale its fragrance, press our hands in the clay, listen to songs and stories. God is our recruiting every writer, artist, musician, pastor, child, and parent he can find to help us do just that so we can worship the Lord in the beauty of Holiness.

________

The phrase "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" is embedded in the experience of wild, crashing thunderstorm. The storm is then turned into an extended metaphor in which the thunder is the voice of the Lord, qol-Yahweh. Seven great thunderclaps, seven times the Lord peals out:

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over many waters. (verse 3, ESV)

For the Hebrews, the waters were chaos, the uncontrollable and uncontrolled, the home of Leviathan, anticreation if you will. But when the voice of the Lord thunders over the waters, chaos becomes subject to creation: life, an allusion to Genesis 1, our first glimpse of the beauty of holiness.

Storms are splendid, beautiful, awesome. God is on display performing the beauty of holiness, and we have a ringside seat.

The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox. (verse 5-6, ESV)

Now the imagination of this praying poet takes off: the voice of the Lord splits huge trees into kindling for bonfires and turns immense mountains into a carnival of dancing animals. Lebanon is a grand mountain range to the north of Israel, and Siren is its largest mountain, a nine-thousand-foot snow-covered peak. The cedars of Lebanon, like the sequoias of California, were renowned for their monumental majesty. We are witness to a world at play to the glory of God, in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. (verse 7, ESV)

Lightning bolts stab the darkness in a magnificent light show, each lightning strike illuminating another detail in the beauty of holiness.

The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. (verse 8, ESV)

An earthquake now. The Lebanon mountains at play to the north are matched by the Kadesh wilderness in ecstasy in the south. Earthquakes are normally frightening, but in this context we imagine something more like children skipping or bouncing on a trampoline. 

The voice of the Lord makes the oaks shake
and strips the forest bare,
and in his temple all cry, "Glory!" (verse 9, ESV)

Can you imagine trees whirling like partners in fast-paced dance, the voice of the Lord calling out the moves, leaves swirling from the trees like skirts and scarves of dancers, the rhythms and movements and exchanges beautiful in holiness.

Suddenly they are assembled in the temple. Oceans roaring, mountains playing, lightening flashing, wilderness skipping and tumbling, oak forest dancing. 

Every time God speaks, there is more life. The energy and exuberance in place and people accumulate.  And them we hear, "In his temple all cry, 'Glory'". 

If we have been paying attention, we are here with them. We are at worship in the beauty of holiness.

_______

The Spirit of God has descended on this old world of ours. It could be a grace-revealing gesture, raindrops on the window, a friend's forgiveness, a miracle conversion, a truth-telling poem, a rose in bloom. The beauty of holiness. And we have ringside seats.

​Henry James said that a writer is a person on whom nothing is ever lost. That sounds like a focused Christian identity to me: the men and women on whom nothing, at least thing that has to do with life - an everything does - is lost. 

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. (verse 2, KJV)

Amen.

It's interesting that the most famous Psalm, the psalm of psalms, is the one that many of us know despite the fact that we know very little about sheep or shepherds. If you have been a part of Christian culture for a reasonable length of time, you know Psalm 23 is etched in.  It's deep in our imaginations and it is the psalm most likely to be remembered by the aged and dying. 

Yet, this familiarity has its dangers. The sharp edges are blurred. Familiarity carries the danger of it becoming a cliche. I am hoping to give this some fresh meaning as you read.

There is something in this psalm that transcends the Palestinian countryside and the work of the ancient Hebrew shepherd poet. Can we realize in a fresh way how this prayer retains its beauty and truth in our world and concrete roads, fast cars, domesticated pets, and internet shopping?

_______________

The shepherd is the center of this psalm.  He is identified as an image of God. In one sentence we are transported in our minds from a Palestinian countryside half a world away and three thousand years ago into our own neighborhoods and work places where God is present. He is Shepherd-Lord. God is good and present. Life is a miracle and brims with beauty and love.

In verse 4, a shadow of all that is wrong in the world in introduced and threatens to move the good and merciful presence of the Shepherd: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (ESV).  The shadow is death - death valley.  This could be the darkest shadows of death: cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, divorce, domestic violence, grinding poverty, homelessness.

We live in the company of both the Shepherd and the shadow.

_______________

We need to talk about the sheep. God is the shepherd and we are the sheep. 

Sheep are notorious for their stupidity. If they are left to themselves, they wander into danger. They absolutely need a shepherd. The psalmist, knowing himself as a sheep "prone to wander' knows God as his shepherd. Many a time God's "rod" guided him around a deep chasm.  Life in the desert for both the shepherd and sheep is not soft. It is menaced by the dark shadows of the beast-infested valley. The threats to life are all around, but the presence of the Shepherd guides and leads, dispersing the threats.

_______________

The second half of the psalm (verses 5-6) exchanges the image of the sheep for that of an outlaw or fugitive: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies" (ESV).

Those who committed serious crimes in ancient desert culture would flee to the uninhabited desert. They would be hunted down until they were found in this harsh, dry, inhospitable climate.

There was one exception to unfriendliness of the desert for these men cursed by a past of sin and hunted down by the law of blood revenge, and that was the custom of open hospitality. Every wanderer in the desert was received into a shepherd's tent as a "guest of God" (Arabic term), furnished with food, and kept inviolate. The shepherd host took responsibility for his safety. This custom still prevails today in Bedouin cultures.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." This is the outlaw speaking. He is threatened by his past, but he is welcomed into the Shepherd's tent, and there, "in the presence of my enemies," he is served a meal. In the shepherd's tent he is safe.

_______________

God is the alpha and omega. He is the beginning and the end. We acknowledge Him at baptisms, at the beginning of human life. We acknowledge him at funerals, at the end of human life. He is also present at the conclusion of business careers, academic commencements, anniversaries, and birthdays.

But what about the in between, the large living interim between death and death, that long stretch between the beginning and the end? What about the middle? It is this period where we tend to belittle our small faith. Is God our shepherd guiding us through life? Is he with us during the fugitive years? Here is where we fall short.

Psalm 23 is a convincing witness that God is our Shepherd.  He preserves, accompanies, and rules us. We  are not created and then turned loose to make the best of it we can. He doesn't just let us fend for ourselves until we die and hauled before the judgment seat for an accounting of our conduct. He is our Shepherd. He guides us as we wander. He sustains us in our fugitive lives. 

Karl Barth put it this way: "We need not expect turns and events who have nothing to do with His lordship and are not directly in some sense acts of His lordship. This Lord is never absent, passive, non-responsible or impotent, but always present, active, responsible, and omnipotent. He is never dead, but always living; never sleeping, but always awake; never uninterested, but always concerned, never merely waiting in any respect, but even where He seems to wait, even where He permits, always holding the initiative. In this consists His co-existence with the creature" (Church Dogmatics 3.3, the Doctrine of Creation, 13)

The shepherd is a guide and a protective host. The Shepherd's rod and staff signal his leadership and a shared life of love and companionship; the Shepherd's table and cup anticipate his protection and sacrificial life of grace. Because not only do we need guidance in life to protect us from daily peril, but we also need grace to free us from past sins, to deliver us from the tangle of bad decisions and faithless acts.

And the psalm is not abstract. There are "green pastures", "still waters", "paths of righteousness" (straight roads), "valley", "rod", "staff", "table", "oil", "cup", "house". This is a relationship of personal presence.  The entire desert and range of experience of sheep and fugitive is brought into intimate and dependable connection with the Shepherd. 

He is a personal God that protects and guides on the one hand, and provides grace and refuge on the other.

__________________

​Do you know that the last word on Psalm 23 was spoken by Jesus? They were often on his lips, and his life was a dramatic exposition of the best of them. "I am," he said, "the good shepherd" (John 10:11). He lived and spoke Psalm 23.

We need to remember that there were good and bad shepherds in Palestine. The test of a shepherd was how far he would go in risking his life to protect sheep or fugitives. Would he lay down his life for them? Sheep can get themselves into dangerous and awkward situations. A shepherd who made the decision to go into a deep and dangerous canyon for single sheep at the expense of one's own life would not be a easy decision to make. We need to remember that neither fugitives nor the enemies hunting them down were harmless. A shepherd would think twice before opening his tent and seating him at his table, anointing his head and filling his cup with the presence of the man's enemies who were out to kill him. The shepherd led a dangerous life. 

When Christ said he was "the good shepherd" (John 10:14), I don't think they understood him to mean that he was gentle, kind shepherd would be nice to the sheep. They lived in shepherd country and understood the reality of a shepherd's life. Being a good shepherd meant taking the risk of life against beasts, robbers, and murderers and they understood this.

And Jesus did just that. He entered Jerusalem when it was filled with shadows of hate and murder. He faced the combined accusations and assaults of religion and government for the sake of all the wandering sheep and fleeing fugitives. He blessed Judas Iscariot with a meal on the same night Judas betrayed him.

Jesus Christ fills in the detail of Psalm 23. Our shepherd continues to work specifically and historically guiding us, saving us.

The prayer has shadows, but the Shepherd is never absent: guidance and grace. Guidance for us wandering sheep and grace for us as guilty fugitives. Guidance and grace triumph.

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of me life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

I would like to leave you with this poem from Elizabeth C. Clephane who wrote a poem entitled "The Ninety and Nine": 
    
    But none of the ransomed ever knew
    How deep were the waters crossed;
    Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through
    Ere he found his Sheep that was lost.

Hallelujah and amen. He is our shepherd.

I remember discussing the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken” in high school and wondering what was down the path that was not as worn down.  It reminds me of real life in trying to follow a path few have chosen and even fewer seem to understand.  Psalm 1 describes two paths.  It sets the stage for the rest of the Psalms, our ultimate prayer book and evidence of every emotion imaginable. It is interesting to note that it was likely written last. It is the finishing touch, defining the contents and fixing the atmosphere on which all of the Scripture is prayed and lived.

But first a story about the Scottish Pastor Alexander Whyte.  When he was addressing a group of theological students, he said, "Ah! I envy you young men with your ministry before you., and especially that you ahead a lifetime of explaining the Psalms to your people!" His delight and and satisfaction in providing a exposition on the Psalms began at the very outset.

"Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,                                                  nor stands in the way of sinners,           
not sits in the seats of scoffers. (verse 1)

Blessed.  It's a beautiful word that announces a sense of well-being, wholeness, happiness.

Jesus used this word eight times in the Sermon on the Mount.  He laid out eight ways to be blessed that the listeners hadn't thought of before.  Here is one of many instances that Christ captured the Psalms.

The psalmist says we are blessed when we do not walk in the counsel of the wicked. As we travel in faith, we are surrounded by others who counsel, advise, urge us in ways that guarantee our happiness. Their advice is supported with statistics and documents. Have you (and I) learned to not be impressed. We are learning to listen to a different drummer.

We are also blessed if we do not stand in the way of sinners. An easier way of understanding this is to not stand around or hangout with those who aren't going anywhere.  They are "in the way" but each one stands making small talk.  They have plans, dream up projects, are great conversationalists, but if we listen long enough, we realize it is mostly hot air.

We do not in the seat of scoffers either. A seat is a place to deliberate, to make judgments, to render decisions. Scoffers look down on others who have't the sense to take a position. They sit together with the know-it-alls. It's a place of cynicism, gossip, and superficial witticisms.  No judge sits over them and no counsel informs them.  They hold nothing in authority but their own so-called cleverness.  Spurgeon, the famous British preacher, called them the "Doctors of Damnation" (The Treasury of David).  

It's important to note that there are three rejected ways of living.  They descend from "walk", "stand" and finally "sit".  It can go from activity to passivity, from the dynamic to to sedentary, sluggish immobility, internal imprisonment. 

__________

The blessed way of life is then elaborated in two phrases:

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night. (verse 2)

We are brought into the world of the Word made flesh.  The world of revelation, the Scriptures, and Jesus.  It is not superstition or guesswork.  It's a world where there is a personal relationship between a God who is involved in our salvation.  Our salvation that is revealed in the Sinai Law of Moses, the preaching of the prophets and apostles, and the good news revealed in Jesus.

We take delight in this through meditation. This does not mean to just read it or just memorize it. Meditate gives the connotation that it is something monks and nuns do in their monasteries or what you might do in contemplating a beautiful sunset.  It's something you do when you are serious about God.

In the original language, the word meditate has to do with slow thinking or slow eating.  We are to literally or slowly chew or masticate or suck on a lollipop.

The best illustration I can think of is what a dog does with a bone. I am sure you have seen it. The dog takes the bone to a private place and goes to work.  He gnaws, turns it over, licks it. He is enjoying himself and is no hurry. Often for a few hours, the dog enjoys the bone, buries, it, and returns the next day to take it up again. An average bone can last about a week.

The dog meditated his bone. You and I are to meditate the revelation in Scripture and Jesus.

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The meditating person is

" ... like a tree
planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither,
In all that he does, he prospers." (verse 3)

Why is there a tree here? Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Jesus use the same image.  An example of robust, long life with strength and beauty.

"...planted by streams of water" is such a lovely detail. It is a planted tree, not something wild growing by chance.  These streams were Babylonians canals that were put into the desert to provide moisture and make agriculture possible in a land of dust of sand. 

The Hebrews were in Babylonian exile when this Psalm was written. They were the tree that had been the object of special care and cultivation, the knowledge and skill of the horticulturist God. Brains and purpose had brought to bear on this tree.

The planning and planting had been successful.  The tree bears fruit and is perpetually green. Creation and redemption are effective and not an illusion.

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"The wicked are not so
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." (verses 4-5)

The chaff here is written to contrasted with the tree.  The wicked, the sinners, the scoffers have persisted in their lack of seriousness and have maintained their course on the road to nowhere.

Chaff is the closest description to nothing that was available. It has no weight, no meaning, no use. Without meaning and responsibility, the wicked have no existence to speak of at all.  It is the dried up husk of something that once bloomed, bore fruit, and brightened the landscape. The wicked are far from what they had been created to be. They are at the mercy of breezes and winds. No roots and no life. There is nothing to them, defined now only by what they are not.

The rather terrifying conclusion is that the life of the wicked/sinner/scoffer is the complete inability to be anything.

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"For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish." (verse 6)

These last two lines show the end result of the two ways of life, the life of the tree and the life of the chaff.  The verb here knows is alive with gospel.  It's the same verb we see in Genesis 4:1 where Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.

This verb is deeper than our modern day notion of dealing with information.  In the Christian sense, it is firsthand relationship, personal knowledge, historical, and existential. In Christ, God knows us, and then, because the initiative has been Spirit-given to us, we know God. It is personal and experienced.

None of us are finished with finding ourselves personally in Psalm 1 until we pay meditative attention to Christ's comprehensive definition of himself in his his last conversation with his disciples.  He says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6 KJV). 

Christ gives his life as an exposition, an incarnation, a presence of how this way works itself out in our lives. This psalm gets our feet wet on the way to Jesus, reading and meditating on the Scriptures in a companionship in which we acquire a feel for the Jesus way of blessing.

Amen for the way!

.There have three major themes that have been a part of 2017.  Teaching, writing, and pastoral work.  Let's look at each in turn.

September 2017 marked the beginning of my 20th year teaching English in Korea.  This was also a year of ups and downs.  Two of my classes were cancelled at the beginning of September just as I was completing a course on history.  I did not take this very well initially.  But, it turned out to be a blessings in disguise!  Due to only thirteen hours of teaching, I was able to:

1) get to know my students very well,
2) spent time tweaking lesson plans and thinking through new possibilities on old lesson plans,
3) exercised three mornings a week and lost over 10 pounds,
4) finished an Advent book that I have been working on since Aidan was a baby,
5) started to think through a blog in resilience for educators,
6) spent more time with Aidan after school.

This was the year I worked with my lowest and most difficult student ever.  I had never encountered anyone who absolutely refused to try speaking English in class until this past semester.  He never did warm up to the idea that he could try to speak and I would support whatever he tried.  This got me thinking about how fear can paralyze and what needs to be done to get over fear and develop resilience.  This will be a new project in 2018 and I look forward to delving in.

2017 is also the year I began to think of myself as a writer.  Despite the fact that I have been blogging since 2012, I don't think I really considered myself a writer.  Why not? This blog has been a creative outlet in so many ways.  I have poured out my thoughts on a myriad of subjects including teaching, random thoughts, family events, food, and book reviews.  The only common thread running through all of this is me celebrating what I thought was important in my life.  I realized I write for me more than for an audience.

This year was the first time I got up the courage to take an online course on blogging.  I signed up for Jeff Goins Tribe Writers course.  Even though I still haven't finished the course (I'm halfway through as I write this), I learned so much about how to write well, blog well, and how to do marketing in a natural, thoughtful manner.  2018 will be the year where I conquer the fear of others being critical of what I write, start a blog on resilience for educators, and finish the editing I need to do on the Advent book I have finished.  

And no, it's not a typical Advent book in any way, shape, or form.  This non-traditional book will look at the trees in the Bible, the stories the trees tell, and the lessons that they have to offer. 

Lastly, I have been involved in pastoral work with children.  KNU New Kids was launched in October of 2015 and it has been a great ride.  I've enjoyed watching this ministry grow from a handful of students to an average of twenty.  My heart feels good when I see the kids sing, dance, and enjoy God's presence.  I have led them through worship, told Bible stories, helped them memorize verses, played games, journeyed to Bethlehem, made crafts, laughed, cried, and hoped.  I have tried to teach Bible, but in the end I hope they will develop their own unique relationship with God and enjoy His good and gracious presence.  

All of these have involved God's heart, my heart, and a huge amount of creativity.  What did God call you to in 2017? More importantly, what do you think God is calling you to do in 2018?