Psalm 91
Extremely profound and life-changing. It made me see God in a deeper light. And I hope that I will remember this everyday
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty
I will say of the LORD,
"He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."
Most High - El Elyon
He is the Most High God, the highest of the high, the ruler of all, the King of kings and Lord of lords. He created us in His image, and we belong to Him. Thus, He is in control of all things - of the universe, of all creation, and he should have pre-eminence in our lives. To dwell in the shelter of the Most High is then to live in utter submission to this God who has created us in love and out of love. We are living in an incredibly busy world - work, life, family, friends - all great but after a long time of trying to juggle it all it will get tiring. It is then important to just take some time out and rest in His shelter.
In Genesis 14, Abram, who would go on to become Abraham, defeated Kedorlaomer and his allies because they captured his relatives. Abram was then met by Melchizedek, the High Priest (another person whose story will be told another day) and Melchizedek blessed Abram. Abram then gave a tenth of everything he owned. The king of Sodom wanted to give Abram more wealth, but Abram raised his hands to El Elyon and swore that no one but God will make him wealthy, so that no one may say that the king of Sodom made Abram wealthy.
Almighty - El Shaddai
"El" means powerful. Scholars cannot agree on the meaning of "Shaddai" and hence there are two camps - one believes that it means "strong, like a mountain", while the other believs that it means "like a mother's breast." Combing these meanings, we then have an image of a God who is powerful and strong, mighty and all-sufficient but at the same time loving, nourishing and satisifying like a mother's love. He supplies all our needs, and He doesn't need us to help him out.
Sarai, Abram's wife, tried to help God out. God has promised Abraham that he will become a father of all nations, and through him, all the world will be blessed. But he was of old age and had no children. Sarai tried to help God out by asking Abram to sleep with her maidservant, Haggar. From that union came Ishmael. But this was still not the child that God had promised. This "helping God out" may have been one of the biggest mistakes in history because until today, we can still feel the impact of that act. Then at the age of 99, when Abram and Sarai were as good as dead, God appeared to Abram and said:"I am El Shaddai; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant with you and greatly increase your numbers." (Gen. 17). This appearance of God was the starting point of Abram becoming Abraham, the receiver of this wonderful promise. Sarai became Sarah. A year after that, the promised child, Isaac, was born. Through the years, God was faithful to this covenant, and this promise was fulfill in the person of Jesus - the forever living descendant of Abraham.
Is there a promise that you have been waiting for? Let God do the work.
LORD - Jehovah
He is a just, holy and righteous God who must purge evil because this is His character. People always talk about how it is God's love that held Jesus at the cross; yes, but it is His righteousness that compelled him to hang there in order to deal with evil once and for all. He then calls us to righteous living. How are we suppose to dwell in his righteousness as a refuge, as He is such a loving, wonderful God, but yet, so just? How are mere sinners suppose to stand in this presence? We do so by living a repented life - a life that acknowledges the saving grace of Jesus, and to turn away from sin, that we may be called "good and faithful servants".
God - Elohim
He is the one who stands on covenant relationships, as He cannot break His promises. He is trustworthy. He will never leave us nor forsake us, engraving our names in the palm of His hands. He restores and He never forgets our names.
In Genesis 15, Abram asked God:" How can I trust you?" when God wanted to make a covenant relationship with him. In the olden days, covenant was made by cutting animals into half, leaving a trench or a trail of blood in between the pieces. Both parties are then to walk on each side of the animal pieces as a sign that says: If I ever break the covenant, let what happened to the animal happen to me." But we see that when God made the covenant with Abram, He alone walked through the ceremony, in a form of a blazing fire. God decided to bring unto himself the burden of bearing both sides of the promise. And again God did this when Jesus came and died on the cross as our perfect substitution. Indeed a trustworthy God that will still remain faithful even though all others are faithless, because He cannot go against His own character. Remember that He never forgets who you are.
Isaiah 49:15-16.
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.
Elohim never forgets.
I will dwell in the shelter of the Most High
- I belong in the arms of the Father
I will rest in the shadow of the Almighty
- I will be fruitful and not step out of God's shadow. I will get to know Him
I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress
- I will live a repented life. Every time the Holy Spirit urges me on something, I will deal with it. I will not run.
My God, in whom I trust
- I will trust in God because there is security in His name.
Help me know you Lord.
i wish
I wish my younger self had known what I know now.
Maybe things would have been different.
I probably won't have gone through that much just to learn really simple lessons.
And maybe, just maybe, if I've had these realizations much earlier...
.. God would have answered my prayers earlier too
But I'll never know.
I hope its not too late.
还有没有人知道，你的温柔像羽毛，微笑像拥抱，
多想藏着你的好，只有我看得到。。。
我坚持学单纯的小孩，静静看守这份爱。
the hymn and the formal rule
Quote:
Ricoeur uses aspects of the biblical tradition to direct our attention to the "strangeness" of the discourse of love. The discourses of love and praise function in a way that are at odds with those discourses that seek univocity at the level of principles. Love is imperative; it commands us, ordering us to have a feeling. What force, what authority, can such a command have? Ricoeur's response is that the authority of the commandment to love is founded upon love itself. The relationship of love, between God and the individual, is foundational to Law and the commandment to love. It is so much more than just a moral obligation. Love, best understood in terms of the power of poetics and metaphorisation, confers a dynamism that is capable of mobilising a wide of affects that we designate by their end states - pleasure vs pain, satisfaction vs discontent etc. This power of poetics and metaphorisation allows love to be capable of signifying more than itself.
Ricoeur contrasts the discourse of love with the discourse of justice, and there are certain aspects where there are clear opposition. What does it mean to be just? By looking at our social practices, he observes that justice is reliant upon argument, confrontation and communicable reason, all of which are foreign to love. He also draws upon the fact that justice, as opposed to love, requires closure - it demands judgment. Many philosophers, from Aristotle to Rawls, have identified justice with distributive justice - assigning roles, tasks, rights and duties based on notions of advantages and disadvantages, of goods and costs. Justice is then tied to equality, where the ideal is an equitable division of rights and goods to the benefit of everyone. From this perspective, society is then seen as a space of confrontation between rivals.
Ricoeur then tries to build a bridge between the discourse of love and the prose of justice - joining the hymn and the formal rule. He found this in Jesus and His teachings. In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke's gospel, we have a dramatic contrast between the logic of humanity - the "logic of equality and equivalent" and the logic of God - the "logic of superabundance". Jesus' logic of excess, of disproprtionality, of superabundance and generosity, is made plain in both Sermons.
Love your enemies
Jesus calls forth an extreme response in us by builidng a pattern of commandments that challenges our human logic of equivalence and proportionality.
Ricoeur identifies the same logic of superabundance in Jesus Christ himself: he is the divine excess of generosity, the abundant free gift, the "how much more of God". The clash between the logic of equivalence and the logic of superabundance is on the level of the dialetic of life and death, redemption and fall. On the side of the logic of equivalence - sin, law and death. On the side of the logic of superabundance - justification, grace and life.
However, it is likely that Jesus did not intend to show that love and justice are irreconcible, but rather with the logic of love, he intends to shed a new inflection on the rule of justice. It interprets justice in terms of generosity. Applied in our society, it is to avoid descending into immorality, to uphold social justice. It is only the logic of Love, disproportionality and superabundance, that ultimately secures justice, and the logic of equivalence, from perverse interpretation. The rule of justice then has the potential to be reflected as a recognition of mutual interdependence, or a competitive attempt to secure private advantage within the security of an accepted framework. Thus, Ricouer suggests that our institutions of justice need to always be guarded by the poetics of love - this includes accounting.
Accounting cannot be satisfied only with the logic of equivalence. At present, accounting is not only satisifed with this logic, but it is its guardian. We must be careful with the perversion of this logic. Our modern capitalist society seems to be founded on the logic of "free" and "fair" exchange - again the logic of equivalence - but behind the semblance of market equivalencies is a perverse reality of coercion, force and covert constraint. The market makes exchanges seem equal when in reality, they are unequal and exploitative.
Ricoeur reminds us that the law of exchange and equivalence is not eternal. Before this existed the economy of the gift: men and women compete to be generous.
- Accounting, Love and Justice; McKernan & MacLullich
treasures in jars of clay
This past two weeks have been really good! I thought it was going to be an absolute mess due to uni deadlines, but its been quite all right. The presentations went well and I've finished my assignment. I have lots more due after the Easter break, and lots and lots and lots of reading that I need to do. But its the holidays! I know I've already taken a day off yesterday, today, and will probably do so tomorrow, but hey, honours has been hectic. More than I thought it was going to be. But God has been gracious - somehow it doesn't seem too bad now.
Oh and my visa finally got approved! FINALLY! I've waited for more than a month to get it! Its during these times when I really feel like a foreigner. I've lived in this country for more than 3 years, and this is going to be my 4th year. It's been 'home' for a long time, but I'm always going to feel just slightly out of place. But thank God my visa has been approved! I can go pick it up from uni next week.
And tomorrow is Good Friday...
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.
It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus...
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
Help me carry your death and resurrection like treasures in jars of clay, so that your death will help me die to sin, and your resurrection will help me shine light to others.
on reading the Bible
Sensus non est inferendus, sed eferendus
Meaning must be read out of, not into, the text.
So true
