Concentrate . . . on your own grievances.
C.S. Lewis
Do you get the sense that you are being barraged by words and images coming through screens? Your phone? tablet? computer? TV? There is nothing wrong with screens, but I often feel like I’m being yelling at: “This is who you are! This is what you should feel! This is what you should think! This is what you should do!”
In his essay, “The Seeing Eye,” C.S. Lewis creatively asks and answers the question, “How do I avoid God?” He writes,
Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.
Lewis wakes us up to the words, images, passions, and distractions that fill our lives. This stuff is like arrows flying at our heads and hearts. And it’s relentless.
One of God’s great gifts to us in the Bible is that every once in a while we get a succinct summary of our Faith. These summaries get to the heart of who we are and what we should be doing. Think of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Armor of God in Ephesians 6. Psalm 25 is one of those passages, with the added benefit of being written in the form of a prayer, a prayer that we can take up and pray today. Faith, follow, forgiveness, and family is a simple way to remember the content.
1. Faith (1-3)
David begins with “To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul,” and “O my God, in you I trust.” The Psalms (the entire Bible!) is full of accounts of messed up people, living in a messed up world, doing messed up things. I find this strangely encouraging. God is saying to us, “I’m your only hope. Trust me.”
2. Follow (4-5)
In these verses David prays his priorities.
- Know your ways.
- Teach me your paths.
- Lead me in your truth.
He displays a disposition to submission, surrender, reception of what God will teach him.
3. Forgiveness (6-21)
Here’s the biggie. There is no Faith or Following without Forgiveness. “Remember not the sins of my youth,” and “pardon my guilt, for it is great,” cries David. What happens to us when our lives are fueled by grievances against Dad, Mom, spouse, boss, neighbor, Republicans, Democrats, on and on? J.R.R. Tolkien brilliantly shows us in The Lord of Rings. We become Gollums and Ringwraiths: angry, myopic, hollow, and inhuman. Forgiveness is freeing!
4. Family (22)
Finally, David prays that God would “Redeem Israel . . . out of all his troubles.” He prays for the people of God. Today, on this side of the Old Testament and the Cross, we should embrace the importance of the church, the family of God. We’re in this together. God doesn’t need our works, but our neighbor does, the Body of Christ does.
What does all of this look like in action? Alan Jacobs recently offered some sage advice on his blog:
I can’t help wondering what would happen if the Christians of America en masse started confessing their faith openly. Not going on a crusade against sexual deviancy or whatever — but simply saying that they believe that Jesus is Lord and that they hope to serve Him, which means to love the Lord their God with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind, and love their neighbors as themselves. To comfort the widows and orphans in their distress. To do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God. I don’t know whether that would “work,” whether it would be “effective.” But those aren’t Christian categories anyway. What matters is being faithful to the God who saves us.
Amen to that.
A Place to Write 