A Student's Simple Plea

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One of the great treasures of the household in which I was raised was our collection of encyclopedias. Not just the base set, but also the annual updates that came with new discoveries, corrections to previous editions, and all sort of other cool things. I remember not only going to it for reference, but also just burning time reading through them. A whole afternoon could pass as I discovered a whole new world just rolling through those pages.

I’ve thought of those encyclopedias over the years as I still marvel at the reality that exponentially more information than was contained in them is available now on the phone in my pocket. And yet, no matter how much information may be available to us, there are things we cannot learn from our reference materials, things given to us by God alone. 

To help us in this conversation, let us hear from the Psalmist as recorded in Psalm 86, verses 11-13, which are as follows - I’ll be reading today from the Common English Bible:

Teach me your way, Lord, so that I can walk in your truth. Make my heart focused only on honoring your name. I give thanks to you, my Lord, my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify your name forever, because your faithful love toward me is awesome and because you’ve rescued my life from the lowest part of hell.

Notice the Psalmist’s desire for the Lord to instruct them so as to help them walk in the truth of the Lord. The desire for God’s teaching is not about helping them know more than another, nor to help their sense of having more knowledge than another…no, indeed, the Psalmist is desiring God’s teaching so they may be a faithful follower. Why this has struck me today is the desire is not to have their own beliefs affirmed; nor is it about debunking the beliefs of another. Indeed, the desire is to walk in the truth of the Lord. Verses like this make our faith journey fun in that they force us to deal with our motivations for wanting to have God’s truth within us. I wonder if, sometimes, our pleas for more might be more faithful if we honestly and openly examined why it is we are (if, indeed, we are) so desperate for this hope.

Additionally, let us not overlook the understanding the Psalmist has about how their heart might be focused only on honoring God’s name. This will come about not because of something from within humanity’s capacity for knowledge and emotions. Indeed, it will come only from God’s work in them. How might we be changed if we opened ourselves to the possibility that our transformation is a result of God’s work within us, rather than our efforts? Maybe then we could take some pressure off ourselves to have to achieve this reality and instead focus on how we might allow God’s work to be done in us.

Finally, let us note the Psalmist concludes this portion of the text with the rationale behind their attitude and plea - the Psalmist roots all of this by recounting the reality of God’s faithful love towards them and recognizing that God has rescued them from the lowest part of hell. What transformational work might happen in our lives if we allowed ourselves to focus more on how much God has blessed us over the years rather than focus on what hasn’t happened?

Earlier, I mentioned my love of the encyclopedia, and how I learned so much about many things through those times of paging through it…what might be possible if we dove into God’s grace, peace, mercy, and love, with the same energy and possibility of wonder that a child might flip through a treasured book?

The Psalmist had a simple plea - for the Lord to teach him the Lord’s way and to focus their heart only on the Lord. May we echo this simple plea…