The nooner...SIGH.

A crappy beginning to my day and a rough afternoon, but can any day be a bad day when you have an opportunity to study God's Word?

Read aloud Psalm 26.  Hear it in your ears.  Taste it upon your tongue.  Feel it in your heart.   Turn it over in your mind.

    Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity,
         And I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.
    Examine me, O LORD, and try me;
         Test my mind and my heart.
    For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes,
         And I have walked in Your truth.
    I do not sit with deceitful men,
         Nor will I go with pretenders.
    I hate the assembly of evildoers,
         And I will not sit with the wicked.
    I shall wash my hands in innocence,
         And I will go about Your altar, O LORD,
    That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving
         And declare all Your wonders.
    O LORD, I love the habitation of Your house
         And the place where Your glory dwells.
    Do not take my soul away along with sinners,
         Nor my life with men of bloodshed,
    In whose hands is a wicked scheme,
         And whose right hand is full of bribes.
    But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity;
         Redeem me, and be gracious to me.
    My foot stands on a level place;

         In the congregations I shall bless the LORD. 

When thinking about this Psalm, I wondered how it could be a prayer for us, for me.  In truth, when I pray the Psalter, it is one I absolutely did not understand.  I prayed it anyway, leaning on the fact that the Holy Spirit translates for me.  He carries the prayer of that psalm to our Father and, eventually, teaches those same words to me!  It is not my understanding that makes the prayers of the Psalter worthy to God; they are holy.  Instead, it is the act of praying them, of hearing, tasting, seeing, touching them as I do so.  The work is God's, remember?  Faith is His gift which I receive.  God gave us prayer for our benefit, not His.  He does not need them.  Instead, He gave them to us that we might be joined to Him.

Still, I did not understand the psalm.

At the nooner, Pastor usually begins by asking what are our initial impressions.  Today, he did not.

One of the MS problems that has grown stronger is that I can easily become confused in the moment.  My private term for it is losing anchor.  The easiest way I can explain it is that if I am expecting you not to be home and am prepared to leave a voice mail and then you pick up the phone, I can lose my anchor in the moment.  I am all ready to leave a message and often have great difficulty shifting gears.  Stumbling and bumbling about on the phone is one thing, doing so in a car, at work, in a store is a completely different animal.  Not a friendly one.

So, there Pastor was, starting right in on his instruction...until I blurted out for him to stop, pointing out he had not asked for our impressions.

You see, I rehearsed my impressions.  This the first bible study I have gone to in five weeks, I believe.  I was shaking like an aspen leaf in the wind.  Even though I prayed the Psalter Saturday night, I spent time this morning reading Psalm 26, thinking about that first question.  When he didn't ask it, I panicked.  I was so afraid of losing anchor, I practically hollered at him that he had skipped it.

When I first arrived, I had something to give to Pastor or his Lovely Bride to pass on to their First Daughter.  I was shaking so badly, I couldn't get it out of my bag at first and then I couldn't think of her name.  I stood there, saying, "This is for..."  Nope.  Nothing.  At that moment, I could not have spoken her name if my life depended on it.  Another MS thing.  When this happens, I usually try to give clues about the word for whomever I am talking with so they can just supply it for me.  But though I could think of them, I couldn't speak them.  Long curly hair.  Likes photography.  Eleven years old.  Lives with you.  I finally said, your second daughter, but that wasn't right.  She was their first!  Damn disease.

This is the first time I could think of  the verbal clues, but couldn't speak them.  In the moment that lasted a life time, a part of my mind stood off to the side watching me struggle, trying to figure out what was happening.  Was it because I was nervous and did not feel comfortable enough to give up trying to get at the word and attempt to provide the verbal clues?  Was this a new cognitive symptom?  Or was something else happening?

She finally filled in the name of person who was to receive the papers (a story) and time began again.

Even though I had brought my Dallas Cowboy stars and helmet to twit Pastor about the slaughter yesterday, I had lost heart.  Was very worried in fact.  So, when he skipped the beginning of what I had rehearsed, I practically demanded he not do so.

SIGH.

I heartily wished I had not come at that moment. 

We did not, unfortunately, move past the first verse once we started in on the lessoning for this Psalm.  I am afraid the reason for this lies completely at my feet.  Tell me, if you had one translation that had "vindicate" and another that had "judge" would you not pause?  Then, in that same verse, if you had one translation that had "lived a blameless life" and another had "walked in integrity" would you not truly wonder about the meaning of the verse and the veracity of the translations?  Vindicate and judge are not synonyms.  While I would think blameless has nothing to do with integrity, I found myself learning that integrity has many other uses than I had in my mind.  [Pastor's Lovely Bride is quite intelligent.  She does not pipe up much (most likely because she rarely gets a chance if I am there), but always, always she gives me pause and inspires much inspiration for her truly fine mind.]  Still, vindicate and judge?

One stinking verse.  The five weeks I missed, they got copious amounts of studying done.  Whole topics covered with many points each week.

My "initial impression" was wrong...NOT the translation issue, because that only arose when I heard the NIV read. But what I thought...how in the world could this be a prayer for me...was completely obliterated when Pastor began the study (before all the slicing and dicing of the first verse) with Luther's introduction to the psalm.

As he read, I watched the verses of the psalm I thought I had read tossed up in the air and fall back down into a pattern completely different than I had first seen.  It was a wonderful moment, a realignment that I cannot articulate as much as I just plain know, in part, why it was that Luther wrote what he wrote.

You have often heard that where God’s Word, the dear Gospel, is preached and proclaimed, the devil does not rest or take a holiday. He fights against it day and night. He resists it with might and main, with every craft and wile. He attacks it with force by murdering and slaughtering those who love the divine Word, plaguing them and scattering them, and then most shamefully abusing and reviling them. If this does not do it, he switches to the other tactic. He tries to do them harm with his clever tricks and evil wiles. For this he uses false teachers and his lying prophets, who destroy the Word of God under the guise of truth.

Such is the plight of the divine Word in the world, and it will not be any different. Hence anyone who wants to be a Christian should not be surprised if God’s Word must suffer persecution in the world, or if false doctrine, error, and heresy sneak in next to the divine Word. This is the way it has to be. If you see this going on, you should know that it is going rightly. The world supposes that everything will go to pieces, for here one falls and there another is lying on the ground. But those who have God’s Word on their side remain and are preserved, even though tyranny and persecution bring on the fall of many who have known God’s Word but who in time of persecution have stumbled and staggered. Still there are many more of those who yield to the other side. They are attacked by heresy and are snatched and seduced from the truth of the divine Word. We are experiencing this now in our time, too. We, too, have persecution and heresy, schisms, and sects that are against us, so that there are few who remain true to God’s Word.
  
All the Prophets have greatly complained about this, and this Psalm 26 is one of those complaints. It also teaches that in this case there is no other or better action than zealous prayer to God and earnest petition to Him to guard the pure teaching of His Word Himself. The psalm rightly portrays the Christian life, how it should be formed and how it pleases God. It complains about the false teachers and schismatics, and it prophesies that they will come to naught. I have often pointed this out in the psalms. They do not pray only against those who persecute and kill them with fire, sword, and water, but also against the schismatics. They seek God’s help to defend them, so that doctrine might be pure and remain so, and so that the divine Word might be purely preached. With the others one should be patient, even though their life is weak, so long as the standard and rule for ordering their life remains pure. Therefore we should speak just as the prophet David speaks here. He puts into our mouths the words we ought to pray against the false teachers. Would to God that we prayed them! 

I shall not deign to try and "re-teach" on that first verse.  In truth, I still do not understand the use of vindicate.  Instead, I shall focus on this quote.

While he was reading, I was struck by the thought that Luther and his cohorts were embattled.  Such strong, passionate, fighting words permeate their writing.  Please do not misunderstand; they were not fighting against men.  No, they were fighting against false doctrine.  Fiercely they held to their beliefs and would allow no compromise.  Sort of like die hard Democrats or Republicans.  Neither one of those would ever join a party which combined bits and pieces of each one's beliefs.  What value would those beliefs then hold? 

A poor example, I'm sure.

Still, what I thought was that the need for clarification on doctrine in the church is dire once more.  And yet, even among some confessional Lutheran churches, you do not see Christians clinging fiercely to their beliefs.  Agree to disagree has become the mantra.  Tolerance the new tenant of faith.  The ideal of this being lauded in Christians and Muslims praying beside one another.  There is only One God and Allah is not He!  In the Old Testament, the Lord never once told His people to go out into the foreign cities and worship alongside those following Baal.  Oh, my goodness, how in the blooming world does a single Christian think that such an act today would be pleasing to God, would honor Him?

Many Lutherans do not regularly study the Book of Concord, or even read through it once.  Many Christians, no matter the denomination, do not regularly study the Bible.  Or pray.  They are content with those things happening to them on Sundays.  They do their faith on Sundays and perhaps bible study days and leave the rest of their living to the world's faith:  Peace at all costs.  Season over Savior.  Grays welcomed.  Black and White eschewed, condemned, mocked.

When I tried to express what I was thinking about how the Church, in America at least, does not act as if it is embattled, how Christians are not clinging fiercely to the Truth, Pastor pointed back to Luther's introduction and the fact that satan changes tactics.  He will always assail and assault; now he is doing so by apathy and acceptance, a siren call for making all things relative and thus nothing True.

Pastor's final comment on this topic was that men do not kill the church; false doctrine does.

Selah.

Read the psalm again.  Can you hear Christ praying it?  Could you pray it now?

    Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity,
         And I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.
    Examine me, O LORD, and try me;
         Test my mind and my heart.
    For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes,
         And I have walked in Your truth.
    I do not sit with deceitful men,
         Nor will I go with pretenders.
    I hate the assembly of evildoers,
         And I will not sit with the wicked.
    I shall wash my hands in innocence,
         And I will go about Your altar, O LORD,
    That I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving
         And declare all Your wonders.
    O LORD, I love the habitation of Your house
         And the place where Your glory dwells.
    Do not take my soul away along with sinners,
         Nor my life with men of bloodshed,
    In whose hands is a wicked scheme,
         And whose right hand is full of bribes.
    But as for me, I shall walk in my integrity;
         Redeem me, and be gracious to me.
    My foot stands on a level place;

         In the congregations I shall bless the LORD. 

~~~~
What is love?


Bettina not answering the phone when she suspects I might be expecting her answering machine.  Choosing instead to simply call me back after I have finished leaving a message is a blessing and mercy to me.


What do I crave?


For people to never stop teaching me, but please, please stop correcting me when they understand my meaning even though I speak things wrongly.  Pointing out what has just occurred will not correct or even help the problem and only serves to dishearten me...and frighten me.  

What terrifies me more?

I sent an email the other day in which, while re-reading it in the reply, I discovered it had several word order switches and letter switches...so much so I was horrified.  And terrified. What I have struggled with my speech is now cropping up in my writing.