Psalm 139, a paraphrase (vi)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

vi

I admit, I am a bit overwhelmed

As I ponder

How completely

You care for me.

I can’t wrap my mind around the

Magnitude

Of these details:

I can’t even get past the fact that You

Care enough

To observe me so minutely,

To study me.

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (v)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:5
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.

v

The oddest part is this: You haven’t rifled

through my heart and moved on.

No, You’ve besieged me. Here I thought

I’d have to look for You, to chase You down,

And when I looked out my windows,

You had me completely surrounded.

You’d planned Your campaign,

You were here for the long haul–here to stay.

And I could feel You laying Your hand on me–

For what?

Just to show me Your closeness?

As a fatherly expression of affection?

In benediction? As investiture of power?

Or maybe so I wouldn’t be afraid of Your

Drastic measures to make me Yours.

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (iv)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:4
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.

iv

You know me so well that You know

What I will say

Before I say it.

[When others do this, I sometimes find it

Disconcerting--should I be

Comforted when You do it?]

[Do You sit back with pleasure to hear

What You know I will say

And how I will say it?]

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (iii)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:3
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

iii

Like diffused light on a cloud-covered day,

You are everywhere around me

Yet springing from no one spot.

You surround what I do

All day long, and at night

Your presence

Is as ubiquitous as the air I breathe.

Like a nurse who has worked with one doctor

For many years,

You are used to the way I do things.

You’re familiar with my

Mode of action–

And You’re comfortable with me.

[Actually, God, I'd like to be comfortable with You that way, too.]

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (ii)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:2
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.

ii

You observe me–

As though I were the most important

Person in the world to You,

You are aware of where I am

And what I am doing:

Whether I am sitting down or standing up,

You know it.

And You can tell,

Like good friends can from across the room,

Exactly what I am thinking,

Nuance for nuance better than I know myself

Sometimes. Well, always.

 

Psalm 139, a paraphrase (i)

9-10-11

Psalm 139:1
O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.

i

Lord God, You have searched me,

Digging deeply down as a miner digs into

His vein of precious metal or as a

Treasure-hunter digs down into his treasure-trove.

Because of this, You know me–

You’ve seen all there is to see.

Psalm 139, a paraphrase

This year in school, my students and I are memorizing Psalm 139 and Romans 6-8. In September, as we were studying through Psalm 139, the full meanings behind the Hebrew words struck me with such lovely force that I decided to try my hand at paraphrasing the psalm, attempting to communicate some of the full color that the words themselves express. By the time I’d made it through the first 6 verses, I’d found myself with two hand-written pages of something more poetic than prose but more prosy than even my typical poems are. I had to laugh at the way it takes me so many many words to communicate the full–wait, not even the full thought of what God expressed in 6 short and deceptively simple verses.

The month of February at my church is a month of reviewing verses that we have memorized over the years, so it is more than fitting (not that I need an excuse) to post this reflection on one of the passages that I partly memorized as a young girl, have now completely memorized, and have found comforting and astonishing at many and various times through my life.

Let me encourage you to read the psalm if you have not–and to read it again if you have–and to ponder with me God’s intimate knowledge and intricate creation of each individual person . . . of me . . . of you.

Psalm 139 (Blue Letter Bible)
p.s. If you click on the “C” beside each verse on BLB, it will bring up the verse with the Hebrew words for each phrase. Click on the numbers in the column marked “Strong’s” to go to a page that gives the meaning of and detailed information on the word itself.

II Corinthians 2:6-8

Grace and comfort
To the sorrowful sinner:
Forgiveness

2-11-2011

Hard–Your Turn

Hello, my dear readers =)

A recent discussion with a friend over one of the stanzas in my recent poem “Hard” gave me this idea =) Our discussion reminded me a little of the exercise we did on my blog a few years ago with John Donne’s poem “Death Be Not Proud”–you can read those paraphrases in this post: Trash Talking Death (be sure to look in the comments!).

I thought it might be fun to do it again, so . . .

If you have the time, would you choose a stanza of  ”Hard” to either rework or to put into your own words?

You don’t have to try to make it “poetic” if you don’t want to; prose would be just as fun as poetry! Just share your version of these thoughts–or even your own examples of the thoughts I shared.

You can post your version in the comments for this post. Please be sure to include the stanza number!

Thank you! =) *eager smile*

Capitalism vs. Marxism–a footnote

“We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . “ The words that follow this beginning come automatically to the American mind:

” . . . that all men are created equal . . . ” (and a few other “thats” follow in the first document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence.)

I just spent the last two posts discussing equality:
a) it’s a fact and not a goal and
b) it’s not as good a determiner of value as love.

Where, oh where, did we get the idea that equality makes us valuable?

We got it from God Himself. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God–the only person who can love individually every being that He created, loving them both uniquely and possibly equally.

But who really thinks about love in terms of equality?

Well, kids do sometimes when they look at how Mom and Dad do different things with one child than with another and begin to compare those things. Sometimes they are right–one kid IS getting preferential treatment. More often they are missing the fact that Mom and Dad do different things for different kids because each kid is different and what would be fun for the one would not be as fun for the other.

We don’t really love people because they are equal; we love them because we love them. Because they are ours to love. Because we choose to love them.

And if loving them makes them valuable, then all people are valuable because God loves them all.

Capitalism vs. Marxism Part 2 (or Blame the driver, not the car)

My brother’s economics teacher told a story about his brother who had been studying in England and had to go to the emergency room for a relatively minor (though uncomfortable and necessary) complaint. He waited, as expected, for several hours to be seen. Not so different from any American emergency room. However, while he was there waiting, a man came into the emergency room with a badly broken arm. He clearly needed more immediate treatment than the brother did, but he had to wait just as long. First come, first served. It’s all equal. That system, of course, is socialism and not Marxism per se, but the two are very closely related. Both of them use “equality” as their by-word and guiding principle. But equality is not as beautiful a guiding star as it seems to be. In fact, it’s not really a star at all, just a hard, cold meteorite of a fact.

The fact is that all men were created equal. No one has to make them equal, they already are.

But equality does not create value. And the funny thing about love (this just hit me) is that it raises the loved one from the original starting point of equality to the higher plane. When you are loved, you know that you are noticed, that you are more than just another pebble among all the other identical pebbles. By loving someone, you inherently affirm that someone’s uniqueness. Loving someone raises that someone from a position of equality to a position of worth.

Equality is what we have already; value and honor, love–those are the stars to navigate by.

So here we have the real difference between capitalism and Marxism/socialism: capitalism does one thing and does it well while Marxism/socialism try to do more than one thing and do both very badly.

Capitalism is merely an economic system in which individuals are free to make their own choices. It is only an economic system. It does not try to control the choices that those people make. If it did, it wouldn’t be a free-market system. It always works like it is supposed to–whether the free choices are based on selfishness and greed or on love and honoring others. By “working” I mean that it allows individuals to make their own choices and those choices produce results in a natural way–wise use of wealth begets more wealth. Greedy use of wealth begets more wealth, but only for a time. In fact, when you hear people talking about “the failure of capitalism” they are really talking about the moral failures of individuals and groups that have led to great losses. Capitalism did not fail. As an economic system it worked just fine and did just what it was supposed to do. The people working the capitalism left out the moral ingredients necessary to produce long-lasting success. In an accident you can’t blame the perfectly functioning car for the choices of the drunk driver.

Marxism and socialism are more than economic systems. They are attempts to ensure that people will make the right choices. These systems begin from the position that humans by nature will be greedy and will exploit inequalities for their own gain; therefore these systems try to eliminate human greed and vice by eliminating inequality. To do so, they attempt to control all individual choices–for the greater good. Because no one can legislate love, they fail miserably at righting the evils they claim capitalism allows (which it does because it’s only an economic system, after all). Because inequality makes everyone ride in the boat at the same time, they fail miserably at maintaining the greater good.

You can’t eliminate the individual and still maintain the greater good. Neither can you eliminate economics for the greater good. Owning and managing one’s own stuff is part of living and being able to do good. Those with more stuff have great potential to use that stuff to help other people–just ask the hospitals that each year write off thousands of dollars’ worth of services for those who cannot pay for the care they so desperately need. That benevolent action has nothing to do with equality. It has everything to do with value, with the value they place on helping others.

[Anyone care to poke a hole or two in my boat? ]

Capitalism vs. Marxism (or The Story of a Boat)

[Joyous Thirst goes political ]

On a teaching blog I read every week, a commenter left this comment on a post about the purpose of learning (“Why Do I Have to Learn This?“):

“Whereas the rules of capitalism said that if there were ten people on a riverbank and one boat moored nearby, they had to fight until one of them got the boat, the rules of Marxism said they all had to get into the boat at once, even if it sunk.” (kvennarad)

First, I had to laugh at the truth of the statement–capitalism does allow fighting for the boat while Marxism insists that everyone must sink together, since sinking is the only fair choice. Perhaps staying on the bank is another option, but theoretically no one wants to stay on the bank and everyone wants to get in the boat and so we must all get in the boat at the same time because taking turns presupposes an inequality. And above all things there must be equality.

My second thought was “wait, there’s a third option.” This is actually a false dilemma. There is something better than equality to be gained and to be practiced, and this something is “value” or “honor.”

Let me state it a bit more simply: it is possible for 10 people to not fight over the boat but to use to boat to help one another get to the other side. This helping one another is something that Marxism rules as improbable and therefore rules it out completely. This helping one another is something that is completely outside the domain of capitalism. I mean, capitalism does not and cannot dictate the morals of those that use its system. It’s only an economic system, after all! It can be practiced with disregard for others or it can be practiced with the principle of “do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” or better yet: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

See, if the people on the bank with the boat treat each other with honor, then they begin to think “how can we all get across the river without sinking the boat . . . and in the most effective, least time-consuming way?”

And if they treat each other with value, they begin to evaluate their own and each other’s strengths (who here knows how to manage a boat?), weaknesses (does anyone get seasick?), and needs (you’re a doctor on your way to deliver a baby? we need to get you across right away!). They also evaluate their assets (the boat) and liabilities (the river, the stormy night, and the limited capacity of the boat).

This allows them to use the capitalistic system of inequality in a way that benefits everyone. And yes, it is a system of inequality because, as kvennarad pointed out, complete equality either gets us nowhere or kills us all.