Sharing Your Own Meditations Gets Messy

Psalm 93

Psalm 93 is one of those parts of Scripture that in your daily Bible reading whether through a chosen plan, a devotional you follow, or other means of reading God's Word daily I recognized and said to myself, "I really needed this right now, today." And then for myself just after posting about deep thinking I find myself needing to do "deep thinking". This is a part of Scripture that boldly stood out to me for it's own reason right now today and I can't get away from facing it. If I was asked, "What do I do now?" for some the amswer could come back, "The next right thing." What then is the next right thing for me? Like Moses standing facing the couple of million people standing between himself and the approaching Egyptian army beyond them, telling them the Lord will take care of us, then at that point the Lord God says to Moses, (very rough translation), "Would you be quiet, turn around, and raise your staff over the Red Sea, step forward and I'll take care of the rest." For me I need to step forward and let the Lord open up before me, especially that which would hold me back from sharing my meditation on this Psalm.

One thing about a meditation like I share here, only I can verify that I am thinking what I do share. Others can only say, "That is true of what I know about him", but they can't say, "I know that is what he was thinking." No, I don't plagiarize making someone elses thoughts appear be mine. I do my best to give credit to whom it is due if I quote something. Even so as I read Psalm 93 I might say about Psalm 93, "These aren't my thoughts." Other believers around me might say, "Well, they should be!" Okay. Well, no these aren't my thoughts. They are from whoever originally wrote them. But in also in a different light, a different way of reading this psalm, these really should be my thoughts.

"So Richard, why is making this psalm your own thoughts such a problem? After all, just read the first verse."

The Lord reigneth, and is clothed with majesty: the Lord is clothed, and girded with power: the world also shall be established, that it cannot be moved.

Psalms 93:1 GNV

"So why can't you simply say this, repeat this psalm as truth for yourself?" Well, this is where sharing your own meditations gets messy. In a way it is similar to when you get into a church setting, say Sunday School, worship service, men's group, women's group, teaching children, even just greeting someone in the hallway we seem to be conditioned just to say something like, "The Lord reigns", and the conditioned response, "He does indeed." Having dealt with continuous health issues nearly half of my lifetime I have come to see the church hallway response to the question, "How are you doing?" is possibly the biggest lie repeated in churches most often, "Oh, I'm good." On the other side those truly concerned might respond with, "No, tell me how are you really doing? I want to know." The same is true asking how and what I truly think when I read this psalm?

Here's where I ask myself, Do I truly honestly act like I believe that "The Lord reigns"? When I read that do I even act like I understand that as a principle, let alone as a very true reality in which I place the entirety of my life? Somedays, No. What I do doesn't make it true or not. It just makes a setting through which I see my meditative thoughts.

When my wife died, a setting of wide impact, many thoughts went through me time, and time again. Months later in GriefShare I learned first hand from others there the terrible implications death of a spouse has for some and it isn't anything like that for another. Yet the death of a spouse makes a very strong unseen impact, sometimes even not recognized by the remaining spouse.

And again, Do I truly believe "the Lord reigns"? Where I didn't weep much, cry much when my wife passed some might say, "Well I guess he didn't really love her that much." But then three months or so later no one saw the uncontrolled sobbing when I broke down in the rare privacy of having no one else in my house. My hardest grieving has been when no one else could see it.

"The Lord reigns." Here, for me, the same truth stands out. Looking back over going on three years of being alone, without a spouse, the only thing I can attribute stability in my life is that "the Lord reigns". Am I first to bounce up and say it every opportunity I have? No, that might have been my wife, but I can't say I do that. Some of my kids see Dad responding in a very stoic manner, as they say. My inner response is definitely different than my outer response. My inner response is still processing what the entirety of this short psalm says about God.

Once I focus on "the Lord reigns" as a truth in which my life can be seen, yes, I can embrace and claim every word of Psalm 93 as my own, not my original words, but a lived truth.