July 6 - Psalms 115-118: Exhilirating Exhaustion

Our family returned home late last night from serving at a conference for cross-cultural workers.  We have never been more certain that we were where God asked us to be.  Our phrase for the experience has been "exhilirating exhaustion".  We supported these missionary families, almost nonstop, for nearly 2 weeks and loved every minute of it!  Our bodies and minds are tired, but our souls are refreshed and alive.  "He has bathed us in light" (118:27).

Psalm 115 reflects my heart's cry during the conference,

Not for our sake, Yahweh, no, not for our sake, but for your name's sake, show your glory. Do it on account of your merciful love, do it on account of your faithful ways.  (v. 1-2)

The stakes were too high, the "job" was too big, the needs were too deep for us to be any real help.  This was a God-sized role and our inadequacies were glaring!  Not for our sakes, not for our glory, not for our benefit did we need God to come through -- but for the sake of His special treasures, for the glory of His gospel love going to the nations, on His account alone could there be any real restoration of these workers.

"You're glorifying something when you find it beautiful for what it is in itself.  Its beauty compels you to adore it, to have your imagination captured by it...

"And when it's a person you find beautiful in that way, you want to serve them unconditionally.  When you say, 'I'll serve as long as I'm getting benefits from it,' that's not actually serving people; it's serving yourself through them.  That's not circling them, orbiting around them; it's using them, getting them to orbit around you...

"A self-centered life is a stationary life; it's static, not dynamic. A self-centered person wants to be the center around which everything else orbits...

"The Trinity is utterly different.  Instead of self-centeredness, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are characterized in their very essence by  mutually self-giving love. No person in the Trinity insists that the others revolve around him; rather each of them voluntarily circles and orbits around the others...

"If this is ultimate reality, if this is what the God who made the universe is like, then this truth bristles and explodes with life-shaping, glorious implications for us.  If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about...

"He must have created us not to get joy but to give it.  He must have created us to invite us into the dance, to say: If you glorify me, if you center your entire life on me, if you find me beautiful for who I am in myself, then you will step into the dance, which is what you are made for."  (Tim Keller, King's Cross)

Father, I want to be in the dance...my desire is to glorify You...help me to orbit around You and around others.  Please, don't let me be stationary.