Show Me the Way

AM Psalm 1, 2, 3 • PM Psalm 4, 7
Job 4:1,5:1-11,17-21,26-27 • Acts 9:19b-31 • John 6:52-59

I’d like to think that the editorial team that assembled the Book of Psalms had a system for ordering the individual works. This morning we get the first three. Does being first make you more important? More essential? Increasingly likely to be read? Pretend the answer is yes.

What can we learn from the very first, the one that the editors prioritized, psalm?

Psalm One is fairly short and sweet, entitled “The Two Ways.” It tells us what makes for a happy person and what happens to the wicked. The happy delight in or love or even thrill (depending on the translation) the law of God. The wicked do not. To delight in the law, one must not fraternize with the wicked, loiter with the sinners, or make comfortable rest with the scornful.

In essence, we learn that what mattered to the person who wrote it and the community in which they lived was how to please God, to avoid being wicked, and to instead live a happy life. And maybe this is what matters to us modern readers too.

Maybe it is just who I am as a person, but I would posit it is the human condition, I certainly spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a good and moral person. The truth is it is more complicated than how it is laid out in the psalms. I don’t have many answers, but I have lots of questions. How do I know what is wicked and what is not? What is the difference between the scornful who we should avoid and the lowly who we should seek out? Why does the psalmist exhort us to not keep company with sinners when that is just what Jesus does?

All I can do is ask that God lead me and show me the way.

Written by Samantha Clare

Samantha practices remembering her inherent goodness every day.