Psalm 129 is a psalm which talks of tough times and tough faith (mentioning oppression, persecution and difficulties), but which also reminds us of God’s righteousness and the way He develops perseverance in us.

Christians are not exempt from life’s suffering. The sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous, indeed, but the rain rains on both too! (Matt 5:45) Disasters don’t only happen to ‘great sinners’, as Jesus made clear when He was talking about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices or the Gentiles who had been killed by the tower of Siloam falling on them. (Luke 13:1-5) Suffering is real and present and can strike any one of us at any time (as the book of Job makes clear), and although it can be used for good by God, we cannot escape from oppression (see 2 Tim 3:12, 1 Pet 4:12, Jn 16:33).

Our initial response to suffering is often anger and impatience. The psalm reminds us that we can be honest with God, bringing those emotions to Him (Ps 129:5-7), reminding us that the psalms are honest in recording the raw emotion often felt in situations that are far from helpful; they are real prayers prayed by real people. All emotions can be expressed to God; anger, resentment and bitterness may not be the ‘right’ response to situations, but God is able to sift us and remove from us all that is offensive to Him, leaving behind only that which can be refined.

Ps 129 reminds us of the need for perseverance and the fact that ultimately it is God who keeps us going and who will continue to keep us going. God’s people may know all about people who oppress them, but they also declare ‘they have not gained the victory over me.’ (Ps 129:2) When a person is ploughing, they hitch up the animals and ploughs and begin cutting long furrows in the soil (or, in this metaphor, in the back of Israel.) The animals and plough go back and forth, working the hard soil until it is churned up enough to receive the seed. It’s hard work for all concerned; for a person on the receiving end of this treatment, however, this would mean pain upon pain: raw wounds, blood, excruciating pain. Then, suddenly, the harness cords which connect the plough to the oxen have been severed. The oxen may continue to walk up and down, but the persecution is no longer having the effect of breaking and demoralising the person. Those intent on persecuting God’s people are often dismayed – and frustrated – that in essence, they don’t have the last word. We have no reason to fear those who oppose God and His people in our modern society, because we know ultimately that God has the last word. God Himself gives us the endurance and encouragement we need to persevere (Rom 15:4-5), and perseverance works character in us (see Js 1:1-5; Rom 5:3).

We are urged to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus: ‘Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.’ (Heb 12:3) In the Message version, this reads ‘When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he ploughed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!’  

We can continue in the face of adversity and persecution because God is righteous; He has done all that is necessary to establish a personal relationship with us and He sticks with it and with us through thick and thin. Eugene Peterson reminds us that ‘Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and morals but by believing in God’s will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.’ (‘The Journey’, P 118)

‘God is light; in Him, there is no darkness at all,’ we read in 1 John 1:5, but for many people, darkness is a very present reality. The ‘dark night of the soul’ is not something we like to talk about, but I have been reading through the book of Job recently and it’s clear that suffering, anguish, confusion, disappointment and darkness are not topics that are glossed over in the Bible, and therefore should not be glossed over by us, however much it may cause us discomfiture to uncover these.

The ‘dark night of the soul’ (a term coined by John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish monk) is that sense of the absence of God which causes us confusion and pain. Is  54:7 says ‘For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with a deep compassion I will bring you back’; Song of Songs 5:1-11 speaks of the Bride’s plight when she is slow to open the door for her loved one and then cannot find him. It is a sense of abandonment and absence which causes us anguish and yearning and longing, an aching that is almost physical in its intensity. The psalmists frequently express this feeling (Ps 10:1, Ps 13:1, Ps 27:9, Ps 44:24, Ps 69:17, Ps 88:14) and Isaiah even speaks of God as One who ‘hides himself’ (Is 45:15).

Yet even in the darkness, God calls us to trust Him; we are called to live by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7), and one of the most valuable lessons in life is learned when we steadfastly continue to trust God even though we feel abandoned by Him.

Charlie Cleverly, in commenting on Song of Songs 5, writes ‘While we may have a simple plan for our life – to be happy, prosperous, successful and at peace – what God wants is for us to learn to trust Him deeply against the odds.‘ (‘The Song of Songs’, P 180) So often, as Joseph found, our plans seem to be in direct conflict with God’s, and we learn, often with a jolt of shock, that God is stronger than we are and His plans will prevail over ours. We may have learnt as children to manipulate our parents and bend them to our wills; we may have learnt as adults to manipulate our spouse, colleagues, friends and family and get our own way, but we cannot manipulate and control God.

Job shows us that it is possible to still walk with God even when we suffer, even when we don’t understand. ‘It is good when we decide not to be offended with God, not to accuse him of not knowing what he is doing, not to resist going down his path for us, but instead to trust him,’ Charlie Cleverly continues. That is a choice. We would not willingly choose darkness; it takes great faith to say, as John of the Cross did,  ‘glad night… more lovely than the dawn!‘, but it is a choice we can make. John 1:5 reminds us that darkness can never overcome light; Ps 112:4 assures us ‘Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.’ Even in darkness, we can choose to walk with God.

Those of us of a certain age may well remember the Cadbury’s Caramel advert which featured a rather seductive female bunny who urged the vigorous, hard-working beaver to ‘take it easy with Cadbury’s Caramel.’

I don’t think God looks anything like that bunny, but I do think sometimes He wants us to learn to lean on Him and relax. (Matt 11:28-30) Maybe this is the kind of thing He wants to say to us:

‘Relax!

You’re not running the universe.

I am.

People baffle you.

The darkness in their hearts wounds you.

You long for lasting change,

But are frustrated by the ‘same old..’

Your own propensity to sin,

Coupled with the deceitfulness of the heart,

Lead you to walk with slumped shoulders and furrowed brow:

Frowning, instead of rejoicing,

Trudging, instead of skipping.

Where is this ‘lightness of spirit’?

You walk with the cares of the world on your shoulders:

Atlas, struggling with a deadweight

Heavier than you were meant to bear.

Let go!

Cumbered with a load of care?

Give it up, then.

Drop the burden at the cross.

Let Me carry you.

It’s not your responsibility.

All I want is for you to learn

The unforced rhythms of grace.

Learn to skip.

Learn to smile.

Learn to relax.

The joy of the Lord is your strength.

I’ve got it all in hand.

You don’t have to work it out.

You don’t have to understand.

You don’t have to solve it.

You don’t have to fix it.

You just have to walk with Me.’

We celebrated our first February birthday in advance last night!

My son and his wife have just bought a rabbit called Thumper. I’ve never had regular contact with rabbits before, and I’m smitten. Thumper is incredibly cute:

I’m becoming (so I’m told) something of a ‘Thumper bore.’ I can wax lyrical for hours about his pointy ears which swivel around when he’s listening alertly, his twitchy nose, his soft whiskers, his big, soulful dark eyes, his ability to hop and flop. I love to feed him cucumber and lettuce and hear his sharp teeth nibbling excitedly. I would never have believed I could find so much character in a rabbit, nor can I quite believe that any other rabbit is as lovely as this one.

When we’re in love, we are very aware of the reasons to adore. Lovers spend hours telling each other of all the things they love about each other; you only have to read the Song of Songs to see that (especially Song of Songs 4:1-15; 5:10-16). So what are the reasons we have to adore God?

• God is holy, pure, incapable of wrongdoing (Lev 11:44, Job 1:22).
• He is love, capable of unconditional love which is everlasting. (1 John 4:8, Jer 31:3)
• He is faithful, remaining true to His covenant even when people are faithless (Deut 7:9, 2 Tim 2:13).
• He is full of compassion and mercy (Ps 86:15, Ps 103:8, 13, Lam 3:22)
• He forgives our sins, removing them from us as far as the east is from the west (Ps 103:3, 9-12)
• He is in full control of the whole universe which He created; He is the author and finisher of faith and the One who sustains everything. (Gen 1, Heb 1:3, Heb 12:1-3, Rev 22:13)
• He is true and just in all He does. (Rev 15:3)
• He knows everything, including our innermost thoughts and feelings, and yet He loves us just the same. (Ps 139)
• He is good and all that He does is good. (Ps 119:68)
• He is gracious and merciful, bestowing good gifts on us even though we don’t deserve them and withholding the punishment and judgment we do deserve because by His grace and mercy, He has borne that punishment and judgment at Calvary (Jn 1:17, Ps 84:11, Deut 4:31, Rom 5:8)
• He is kind. (2 Sam 22:51, Jer 9:24)
• He is truth. (John 14:6)
• Life and light reside in Him. (Jn 1:3-4, 1 Jn 1:2, 5)

The reasons for adoration are bound up in the person of God Himself. He acts in complete accordance with His character, showing no duplicity or dissonance, always acting consistently and with integrity. When we pause even for a brief time to consider who God is, our list of reasons to adore Him fills the pages and we are left with thankful, grateful hearts.

I recently came upon this quote from Puritan writer Thomas Brooks on contemplating Jesus. He writes, ‘He is a jewel more worth than a thousand worlds, as all know who have him. Get him, and get all; miss him and miss all… The soul can crave nothing, nor wish for anything, but what is to be found in this Portion. He is light to enlighten the soul, wisdom to counsel the soul, power to support the sould, goodness to supply the soul, mercy to pardon the soul, beauty to delight the soul, glory to ravish the soul and fullness to fill the soul.’ (The Unsearchable Riches of Christ,’ P 263) Amen!

How adoration is expressed will vary from person to person, but the Bible shows us 4 common ways of expressing adoration when encountering God.

Removing Footwear

When God revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush, He commanded Moses to ‘take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’ (Ex 3:5) When the commander of the army of the Lord appeared before Joshua in Joshua 5, Joshua’s response to the holiness of God was to fall facedown before him in reverence (Josh 5:14) and the commander’s reply was the same as to Moses: ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ (Joshua 5:15) Adoration is a response to the holiness of God, to the ‘otherness’ of God, to the fact that God is so different to us. Removing footwear was a sign of respect; bowing down in prostration is another sign of respect.

Falling Facedown

When God appeared to Abram, renewing the covenant He had made with him, Abram fell facedown (Gen 17:3). When David and his men looked up and saw the angel of the Lord standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem, about to exact justice because of their sin, he repented and fell facedown (1 Chron 21:16). When Ezekiel first saw the glory of the Lord, he fell facedown (Ezek 1:28). When the disciples witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus and heard the voice of God from the cloud saying ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’, they fell facedown (Matt 17:5-6). When John encounters the risen Christ on the island of Patmos and has that vision of the Holy One described for us in Revelation 1:13-16, he falls on his face as though dead (Rev 1:17). God is so awesome and majestic, that when we encounter Him, we fall down in awe, in fear and trembling.

Kneeling & Bowing Down

This is the common posture for prayer. When we encounter God in all His brilliance, majesty and might, we are instantly aware of His greatness and our insignificance in comparison. The psalmist captures our response when he says ‘When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?’ (Ps 8:3-4) Bowing down, kneeling down, falling facedown are responses to this might and majesty that acknowledge God’s greatness and our lowliness at the same time. Ps 95:6-7 says ‘Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.’ The Israelites were constantly warned of the danger of bowing down to false gods or idols (see Is 44:15, 17, 19; Is 46:6) because this is a way of showing respect and worship which idols don’t deserve!

The Wise Men brought gifts to Jesus and bowed down (Matt 2:11) and Satan himself knew the significance of bowing down, for he tempted Jesus with the words ‘“All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”’ (Matt 4:9) Nebuchadnezzar had issued similar orders to bow down to the statue of gold (see Dan 3:5-6) and Jesus Himself knelt down as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:41-44) and then fell with His face to the ground as He prayed for the cup to be removed from Him (Matt 26:38-39). He showed us that prayer involves our whole being, our body as well as our mind and words.

Adoration is something we need to cultivate every single day of our lives. As we grow in appreciation of all God is and all He has done, as we fix our eyes upon God and meditate on His love, His power, His wisdom, when we truly think about who God is and what He has done for us, we will be filled with love and will naturally adore Him. The only things which stop us adoring God are hearts that are cold, lifestyles that are too busy to pause in wonder, and indifference to who God is and what He has done. To all who are grateful for God’s mercy and grace, adoration is the natural response. We want nothing more than God. (‘Nothing More’, Aaron Shust)