Rector’s Reflections
Tuesday 22nd October 2024
Spiritual Wisdom from the Psalms (Psalms 105 and 106)
Here’s a question for you: if you were asked to share the story of your relationship with God as it has developed over the years, what sort of story would you tell?
The author or authors of Psalm 105 and 106 suggest that for each of us, there are basically two different stories. These stories give different perspectives on our relationship with God. It is not that one story is right, and the other is wrong. Both are right, but they tell story from different perspectives.
The first story sees things from God’s point of view. This is the story as told in Psalm 105. Over the years, God has lavished us with gifts and has been taking care of us, in good times and in bad. Our hearts should be full of thankfulness and gratitude. But so often we forget our blessings, or take them for granted. And then we complain when something does n’t quite go according to plan. When we look at our lives, I think for many of us, perhaps for most of us most of the time, the glass of blessing is actually quite full- well over 50 per cent full, and perhaps as much as 80 or 90 per cent full. But do we give thanks to God for the 80 or 90 per cent? Probably not. We complain about the fact that the glass of blessing still is n’t a 100 per cent full. How ungrateful we must seem.
So one way we can tell the story of our relationship with God is by looking back over the years, and giving thanks to God for the numerous ways he has been blessing us, guiding us and protecting us. And when our lives have experienced difficult patches – when we have been walking through the vale of the shadow of death, literally or figuratively- God has brought us safely through.
But there is another way of telling the story of our relationship with God. Instead of focussing on God’s blessings upon us, we focus on the way we have responded to God- or have failed to respond, as the case may be. This is the story as told in Psalm 106. There are so many ways in which we can fall short in our relationship with God. We can simply forget about his very existence, or treat him like some heavenly slot-machine: when we need something, we offer up a prayer and hope that we shall hit the jackpot. And there are times when we can be wilful: we know what God wants us to do, but we ignore this and do want we want to do instead. Of course, our disobedience is not always as deliberate as this: perhaps it is more often the case that we don’t even bother consulting God in the first place. So this version of our relationship with God over the years tells the story of God’s generosity meeting human ingratitude. It tells the painful story of a broken relationship: God has always been faithful to us, but so often we have been unfaithful to God.
I wonder how you might at your own spiritual life in terms of these two narratives? The narrative that lasts all God’s blessings over the years can be quite re-assuring, especially at times when we are worried about what’s happening in the present or what might happen in the future. It reminds us that God has been caring for us over the years, and so we can assume that he will continue to care for us in years to come. But the more we remind ourselves of the reality of God’s love for us, the painful it becomes when we remember our own indifference and ingratitude. The story of our failure to respond to God with love and faithfulness is a hard story for us to tell, but it is a necessary story. It is a reminder that despite our many failings, God still loves us anyway. It might also stir us into action. How might we be more faithful in our response to God’s loving presence in our lives? What might we do to show that we are truly grateful for all that God has done in our lives?