Last week, where I work, we received a directive: a procedure was to be carried out on all computers at a specified time. The time came this morning. Complex instructions were given with a video to follow; computers would need to be restarted three times over immediately thereafter.

And so I began—only to find my computer stalling at the very first step. As I tussled with the machine and the minutes ticked by, I realized I had to put aside my pride and my desire to show myself competent and admit, “I don’t know what to do now” and go to the IT technician for rescue.

What a relief when he said, “No worries,” and did the whole job for me (in about one minute flat!). It was taken out of my hands and sorted by the expert, the one who had the whole picture and knew what he was doing. All I had to do was to ask for and accept help with gratitude.

It’s not always easy to put aside our pride and acknowledge that we really don’t understand something or know how to sort things out. We so often base our sense of identity and worth on our performance. How much harder it would have been for the king of all Israel, David, who spent his life making strategic decisions. Yet in today’s psalm he shows humility, rest and trust. Can you sense his relief?

There’s a great weight that comes off our shoulders when we turn to God and say, “I can’t do this. Please take over. I’m trusting you.” God has given us a mind and expects us to use it and to act on our thinking, but there are times when our resources are simply insufficient, or when all God wants is for us to let him take over.

Maybe you are in a place like that today and need to sense the relief that handing it over to God can bring. As Isaiah reminds us, “In returning and rest you will be saved; in quietness and confidence will be your strength.” (Isa 30:15)

I wonder if Jesus had this psalm in mind when He spoke about becoming as little children (Matt 18:2-4, Mk 10:13-16, Lk 18:16-17). Notice also a link with the first of the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3). Humility, rest and trust.

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | One comment

The book The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg is a great read and re-read to absorb all the great spiritual nuggets. While reading Psalm 130 I remembered a part of this book about transformation. Ortberg writes about how the Bible can truly transform us “by the renewing of our minds” and can “equip us for every good work.”

Ortberg goes on to say that it’s really not about the quantity but the quality of what we read and study. We shouldn’t read just for information (although that’s good) or to prove a point (ouch), but to be transformed—to be different and live our life in a different way.

How different would we be if we were transformed by God’s Word and the beautiful Psalms? How would our marriage look? How would we talk to our children and loved ones? How would we work? How would we look at a homeless person? How would we resolve a problem? What would we think in traffic? How would we spend our free time? And the list goes on. I have a long way to go and know that I am a work in progress. This is a lifelong process.

So today I pray we can take some thoughts from Psalm 130, meditate on them, and let them become a part of us—to transform us.

1) The Lord hears our voice and supplications. He does not keep a record of our wrongs but forgives. No soul or request is beyond God’s help.
2) We wait for the Lord in His Word. We can have great expectations. We have hope in God’s Word. We have His promises.
3) With the Lord there is mercy and plenty of redemption and salvation!

Have a wonderful day!

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | One comment

So often we hear the saying, “Youth is wasted on the young,” but at times I think it should be accompanied with, “Wisdom is wasted on the old.” For it seems that as soon as we start to understand the complexities of life, it kind of slips from our grasp. I like to think that the most relevant saying to us all is, “The more I learn, the less I know.”

Ecclesiastes 4 starts off saying how we are so often either angry at the greed and oppression that surrounds us or we are striving to be and have more because of what we see our neighbour has. Either we seem lazy and bitter or busy and jealous. We become either completely dependent on others or totally independent. Neither dependence nor independence are bad things in themselves; however, when not balanced against each other they can be extremely detrimental to our own situations.

I like where Ecclesiastes then heads. In a nut shell, it’s all about balance and interdependence—that place where we realise that for the most part we are made to co-exist together, to work together and to live together. Work is more efficient when there is more than one, provided both are working. Two keep warmer than one, unless someone hogs all the blankets. Two can defend each other better than one, unless one of them spends all their time attacking or sleeping.

So whether it’s in our personal relationships, families, work life, or church life, we become a whole lot more effective when we take responsibility for our own lives but work together in what we do.

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | 4 comments

This psalm was one of the ancient songs sung by the redeemed community on their way to one of the three key great feasts in Jerusalem. We might expect them to sing upbeat, groovy songs to energise them for the journey. But what we get are songs that reflect the realities of life. And some of those realities are plain hard! In case you missed the lyrics, listen again: “From my earliest youth my enemies have persecuted me” (and it’s sung twice!). It’s odd, isn’t it? Why dwell on the painful past?

Yet, God invites the faith community to look back and remember. The people of God back then would recall times of difficulty: Some of their suffering was unfair – like their Egyptian bondage. Some was self-inflicted from their own rebellion – like the exile they experienced in Babylon. I’m guessing there were tears as they remembered. No doubt many in the community were experiencing similar times again.

However, the lyrics continue: “but the LORD is good; he has cut [us] free from the ropes of the ungodly” (v. 4). As they looked back at these painful times (whatever the reason behind them), they could also recall the goodness of God. They weren’t immune from pain, but they could celebrate the God who was there and was still good.

Let’s face it. Life is tough at times. Really tough. It’s no use pretending otherwise. And sometimes we don’t feel much like grooving. There are times in our past that are plain hard. Our God invites us today to sing a song of lament, where we look back and remember our painful experiences but also remember how God showed up. We might not see it at the time (I didn’t see God at the time of a painful event I experienced). But, as we cast our thoughts back, we can begin to see the goodness of God who (eventually) puts all things right (that was my experience). So, lament. God invites us to do so. It’s even part of our worship.

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | 2 comments

I know it’s strange, but I enjoy looking at share price graphs . . . you know, those graphs that show you the history of a company’s share prices.

When you look at a 20-year graph of some successful companies, you see nice, big over-arching trends. You can see how the company has performed and how healthy it is. Graphs show steadily climbing lines with a few minor glitches here and there, but overall it goes up.

But when you zoom in and look at the graph showing the price change over one or two days, you get a very different image. There are massive peaks and sharp dips in the graph—it’s all over the place—and it’s quite difficult to determine the success of a company from such a narrow window.

Psalm 128 talks to the fact that people are not that different from this illustration.

Now we all live life at the coalface and know how volatile and fragile life is, and I don’t think the psalmist had any intention of insulting anyone by glossing over the real day-to-day issues that we deal with. Instead, I believe that God is giving us a snapshot of the 70-year graph of life—the one He originally intended for us and is offering as a template for hope, the goal of growth!

The key theme in this psalm is RESPECT, and the consequence of respecting God is prosperity. Respect is an attitude; it’s not something that comes easily and is not implanted automatically just because you follow Jesus. It requires intentionality.

One big problem is that we all have a different opinion of prosperity. To the psalmist, who lived in a world where mortality was high, a fruitful wife and many kids ensured the growth of his family. But I don’t think a 21st-century city-slicker executive sees hoardes of kids and a vine-like wife as prosperity as much as he may see it in the growth of his company.

Likewise, I don’t think a farmer craves driving around muddy farmyards in an Aston Martin as much as he craves steady rain so that his crops can grow. In all these cases prosperity looks different, but in all these cases growth is the common element in prosperity.

The true measure of a man’s wealth is not measured by the contents of his bank account. It is measured in the quality of his friends and family, and this is what God does promise in this psalm—solid relationships and strength of character. When these are combined in community, growth happens. Then, life is truly good!

Jesus reiterated this psalm when he said, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

We are not going to avoid the ups and downs of life, and we’re not supposed to. But if our goal is to respect and honour God, we will see the trends of love, growth, and prosperity interwoven into the course of our lives.

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | 2 comments

Psalm 127 is a simple psalm (only 5 verses) with a simple theme: grace.

Solomon begins with “vanity”—no, not the bathroom vanity, but the emptiness and worthlessness of working in our own strength when in reality everything hinges on God’s.  He says: we work and strive to build when life is dependent on God, not us.  We watch and guard and seek to live in safety when in reality there is little we can do; it is dependent on God, not us.  We rise and we labor but in reality our provision is dependent on God, not us.  In short, without His grace we would have nothing; and unless He acts, we gain nothing.  It is simply by His grace.

So too it is with family (verses 3-5): children are a gracious gift from God.  Solomon says, “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them”—blessed because God graciously gives, not because we plan and produce.  We can’t keep our kids safe.  We can’t guarantee their future.  We can’t even guarantee that we will have children.  It is simply by His grace.

And so the psalm ends, and as it does it asks an unspoken question:  “Why do you work so much and trust so little?”

REALITY CHECK:  Far too many of us bear alone the weight of a life we cannot control when instead God asks us to place that weight on Him.  God calls us to cease our striving for worthless things and for things we cannot control and instead strive to trust in His grace; trust that He will do what is right and that He will work all things for our ultimate good and His ultimate glory . . .

. . . because it is simply by His grace.

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | 7 comments

I can hear it clearly: the happy, uninhibited, slightly off-key sound of my 4-year-old singing along with Andrea Bocelli. I put down the dishes to listen. My daughter often bursts into song—sometimes to comfort her little sister, or to celebrate an event, or just to express joy. This particular outburst (“in my own kind of Italian, Mommy”) sounds like the joyful variety.

Psalm 126 is also a song of the joyful variety—one of fifteen “Songs of Ascent” believed to be sung by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem. The psalmist mentions “joy” and “songs/shouts of joy” four times in just six verses, finding joy in the past (v.2), present (v.3), and future (vv. 5, 6) experience of God’s people.

But the singers in this psalm are not like my daughter: their songs of joy are borne from great suffering. Unlike my daughter, the “we” of the psalm have endured enslavement and exile and are still facing difficulty despite their captivity’s end. Their work of rebuilding a devastated homeland reminds me, in some ways, of the challenges facing those who have returned to a post-Katrina New Orleans.

So why is this psalm still one of joy? Because of God’s nature. The psalmist trusts that God will enable His people to sing again. Psalm 126 anticipates that present sorrow will be turned into future joy. Ultimately, God has made unending joy possible in the person and work of Jesus. So we, too, can persevere in hardship:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-3, NIV).

Today, give thanks for a time when God did “great things” for you. Ask Him for the strength to continue to “sow,” even in tears. Or simply pray the prayer in this psalm—not just for yourself, but also for those around you, knowing that Jesus has set things in motion for an eternity of joy.

And now, God, do it again—
bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
will shout hurrahs at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing. (vv. 5-6, The Message)

© Vertical, 2010. | Link to this Devotional | 4 comments