A Verse A Day (Day 20)

 A Verse A Day 

 

In the 84^th Psalm, the psalmist makes this arresting claim: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.” 

 

You know, those tents of wickedness are pretty enticing. Perhaps it is the wickedness that one can imagine going on inside, debauchery dressed up as progressiveness, excess, profanely shedding the stiff clothing of conventionality behind the curtains. Perhaps it is the sheer luxury of those tents, baths of asses milk, silk from the east, abundant wine from the finest vineyards, rich sweetmeats, a table spread with fresh fruits and nuts, the best musicians offering songs of delight, elegant everything. Perhaps it is the status, the pride, the hubris of ownership, the “it” factor, the joy of knowing that anyone who is someone wants to be you, the influencer of all influencers. 

 

And then there’s the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper doesn’t actually live in the house. It might be a fearsome guardian, who would take off the head of anyone who might try to meander in uninvited or by stealth. It might be an old sleepy fixture who has to be awakened to greet people properly as they enter. Nothing about this person says “me.” The uniform belongs to the house, the house belongs to the owner, the smile the greeting are all part of the script, an act, lending an air of dignity, while playing into the theater of owners who are too entitled to open their own door themselves. How many doorkeepers secretly loathe the person who calls them by their first name but who is always called with the utmost measure of respect? 

 

The psalmist is ultimately saying, “I’d rather debase myself for the Lord than luxuriate for myself.” That sentiment can only make sense if the owner of the house is worthy beyond one’s own self-worth. That’s what I am holding today. 

A Verse A Day (Day 15)

“The firmament proclaims God’s handiwork,” according to the 19^th psalm. Here’s a shout out to the translators for choosing the word “handiwork.’ It’s a perfect term. Whether it refers to making paper cranes, intricate drawings, carving, doodling, swaddling, stitching, stirring, painting, braiding, tattooing, or designing – handiwork is what we do when we’re doing. 

 

So, if I imagine the firmament – the heavens, outer space, nebula, dark holes, galaxies, suns, stars, multiverses, and all that is therein – as God’s handiwork, what do I see? What if God is like Banksy – the incredible artist whose works take glimpses of the inner city and re-imagine them in ways that are truly revelatory? What if God’s is like Alice Walker, who uses ordinary language to convey extraordinary truth? What if God is like Leonardo, ambidextrous, inventive, and the master of form? And what if God is like that tinkerer who took the dissatisfaction with previous designs and modified them to become a zipper? Seeing God in these different ways might enable me to see the firmament and all creation in a different way. 

 

For me, a profound metaphor for God’s handiwork might be the Tibetan Buddhists that create the sand mandalas. It is intricate work. There is a melodic, constant humming that accompanies the concentrated silence. The artists are intensely focused on every grain of sand and how they create patterns, color, and meaning. It takes a long time of sustained effort. Then, when it is done and its beauty is fulfilled, they dismantle it, to reflect the transitory nature of life. The dismantling itself is a ritually deliberate process, before the sand is returned to the river and reabsorbed into the elements. 

 

What if that’s the kind of artist God is? What if God’s handiwork is to create a universe, which lasts for eons to us and mere billions of years to God, only to reabsorb it into the dark matter before another universe bursts into being? The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork – do I even have the capacity to hear and see? 

 

A Verse A Day (Day 13)

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” Psalm 19:1 

 

Firmament. What a strangely familiar/unfamiliar term. I remember it chiefly from this snatch of the 19^th Psalm, and from a few measures of a song my college choir rehearsed and sang, when the tenors finally got to sing a high note in full voice. Even now when I read the word I hear it as an F with the dotted-eighth, sixteenth, and accented E quarter note rhythm. It feels much more majestic that way. 

 

The psalmist might be singing, but is also – literally and metaphorically – reaching for the stars. The great blue yonder, that dome above the earth, the heavens, the “there” that is “up there” but so far beyond our reach that we can only point to it and wonder. The real that is so unlike reality that we cannot describe it. Of course today we know that the firmament is not “up there” like a dome but “out there” from every perspective point of the globe. We have explored and probed and landed and fetched; we have sent moving telescopes out into the depths, only to be astounded anew at the abundance, the beginnings and endings, the constancy of change. 

 

The firmament. To those of us in the space age it seems like the final frontier, but the psalmist sees more. Even when we speak of the firmament as infinite, ever-expanding space, the psalmist has something to say: Beyond it all is something more, namely, God.  

 

I’m going to hold this claim, “the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork” all week long.