Psalm 37 is a psalm of perspective, with David giving us many warnings and many encouragements which help us to keep our eyes fixed on God and live life with a sense of God being at the centre. Perspective has two main meanings. In art terms, it means the art of representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other. Some artists (eg Turner and Constable) are skilled in painting scenes which look incredibly realistic:
Others (eg Picasso and Mondrian) deliberately seem to distort perspective to create a reality that seems to us perhaps bizarre or not representative of what we see with our eyes.
Whether we love a particular artist or find them disturbing and reject their perspective depends on our own personal preferences and on our own perspectives.
Perspective (from the Latin word meaning the ‘science of optics’) has also come to mean our outlook or viewpoint. Just as our physical vision may be lacking, our spiritual vision needs constantly to be honed so that we are seeing life from God’s perspective. In Psalm 37, David writes to people who can easily look at life through the wrong set of lenses. He readily acknowledges that evil exists, but reminds us that we need a long-term view which rests in a security in both God’s ability to do something about evil and in His intrinsic goodness. David is not only at pains to show us how wrong we can be when we take the short-term perspective, he is careful to show us the many benefits – both immediate and long-term – of our discipleship. He reminds us that if we are to live with clear-sighted, God-centred vision, we have to be prepared to live with a ‘long obedience in the same direction’, living with congruence, living a holistic life whereby everything we think, say and do all mesh together. Any stance which focuses exclusively on the now, never learning from the past (or ‘remembering’) and never looking ahead in anticipation to the future, will always lack something. Now-oriented religion, a security-obsessed present which lives entirely in the ‘now’, will never satisfy. We need to be able to keep hold of what God has already done and what He promises to do in the future if we are to live with confidence and hope, secure that ‘a future awaits those who seek peace.’ (Ps 37:37)