He first delighted in us, and now we love to delight in him in return. This is our introduction into the blessed life, and this is the truth we need to press deep into our hearts to make it through our wintery seasons faithfully. Once we’ve first been properly introduced to the truth of Jesus Christ, we can delight in the honesty of the blessed relationship described throughout the Psalms. 

Most nonfiction books have an introduction. This is typically a brief but essential section at the beginning of the book. One of its purposes is to present the information necessary to comprehend what the book is about. The author answers the question, What does my reader need to know to understand the rest of this book? The book of Psalms is no different.
While the Psalms has been known as the prayer book of the Bible, it doesn’t open with a prayer but with an introduction. You could say Psalms details for us the blessing of direct and honest access to the Creator of the universe. Psalm 1 shows us where that access to God is found. 
The author gives a sweeping view of the blessed life through contrast. We either delight in the ways of the wicked or in the law of the Lord (vv. 1–2); we’re either blown like chaff or firmly rooted (vv. 3–4); we’ll either burn up in the judgment or stand confidently with the congregation (vv. 5–6). The psalmist details these contrasts to show us a progression. Your delight informs your roots, which inform your stability on the last day.  
What’s Your Delight?
If you were to set a marble down on the hardwood floor of my house, it would slowly begin to roll away. That’s because the foundation of my home has been settling and shifting for the last 82 years. Each time I begin a construction project, I must consider that nothing is square.
Psalm 1 tells us the wicked are building on uneven supports. They’re expecting steady results but working from a flawed foundation. 
But to delight in the law of the Lord is to build on a level rock. It provides stability, clarity, and accuracy that the shifting sands of the wicked, sinners, and scoffers cannot. The foundation on which you set your delight informs the direction of the structure it supports. Just as my uneven foundation makes nothing in my house square, the psalmist is saying the direction of your life will be misguided if your ultimate delight is placed anywhere but in God.  
Where Are Your Roots?
At the start of each spring, the fruit trees in my yard begin to blossom.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by J. Chase Davis |
Thursday, July 11, 2024
A church that is hospitable and yet confident of its own identity and tradition is naturally attractive without trying to be. But even if it was not pleasing to degenerates, since when did the marketability of the “gospel” to the lost become the litmus test for faithfulness? The fact that we have conceived of the church in terms of its attractiveness to the world is, how do they say, “problematic.” On the other hand, a church that seems like it would change its very beliefs and traditions for you to join comes across as desperate, needy, and clingy (because they are).

No strategy is more central to the leftist blitzkrieg than the deracination and destruction of the unchosen bonds, such as family ties, our cultural heritage, and the common way of life of the American people. Once you alienate man from himself and his people, he quickly succumbs to the total state. He will believe lies so long as he can feel the cold blue glow of his pixelated screen.
A fundamental way the left has accomplished the deracination and alienation of the American people from themselves and their roots is through mass-scaled consumerism. No, “In and Out” coming to your Texas town is not a wonderful sign of progress. It is a sign of just how bad things are. Rootlessness is the goal, and particularity is in the way. However, the average American consumer does not think this way. For them, the convenience of consuming foods and products from foreign cultures is very en-vogue and cosmopolitan. This is the end goal of the left, a rootless people “free” from unchosen bonds. No longer do we have regional cuisine. Go to your local Trader Joe’s and eat the same beans as everyone else, you rube.
The average American’s rootlessness has produced a sad state of affairs. Children move away to college. At best, they can find a spouse, from a different location often, and then get a job in another location far from home. They then attempt to plant roots in this new local economic zone but are frequently moved to another economic zone before any relationships can form. If statistics are to be believed, 60% of evangelicals never return to church after college. Before they know it, they have drifted far from home. Depression and anxiety are salved by mass-produced happy pills by corporations spending billions of ad dollars on the very same devices that promise freedom but only make us more isolated and disconnected. Rootlessness is now a blessing of liberty and the way of life for many young evangelical Christians.
The church has not resisted this mass market rootless consumerism. In fact, it has simply given itself over to managerial Christianity. Now, you can go to your local Life “Baptist” Church in 12 different states, piping in the same sermon and music. You can turn on the radio and listen to positive and encouraging music that your worship band will knock out of the park next Sunday during the worship experience. Did you miss church for the fourth week in a row because you just had to get brunch with the girls? Don’t worry; catch the latest worship experience on your phone!
In this religious climate, the youth are looking for something more rooted. The rootless American has tried the cosmopolitan buffet and is still hungry. Many realize that this is no life. In fact, it seems that the entire world is anti-life. Where can these rootless people find roots?
It is no wonder that younger generations are flocking to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Evangelical churches often have the temperament of a desperate woman or a “pick me” church looking for approval from outsiders. The American evangelical church reeks of desperation. Like a prostitute on a street corner, they adorn themselves to look pleasing. And for the right amount of attendance, they aim to please.
However, churches aiming to pass down their tradition have the cool indifference of a man who says, “Take it or leave it; this is who we are.”
Read More
Related Posts:

The Pope is calling for an International Pluralistic religion, centered around himself. It is not difficult to see where this is all going, since he himself makes that clear; “It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.”

On 6 March, 2021 the Pope officially launched his new religion. Well, its his same religion, come out of the closet.
It is clearly Universal in scope, calls for a single Congregation of religions, and places himself as the universal Roman head of it. It was held at great risk in war-torn Iraq, in the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldeans. The Vatican has been repairing the Ziggurat at the cite of the ancient city since 1999 just for this event. It hosted the leaders of most of the world’s religions.
The speech is in line with The New Catechism of the Catholic Church, which embraces all the world’s religions as paths to the same end; paths to the same god. The only religion specifically to be excluded is one which does not recognize that the Pope is the Head of the Church, and the Russian Orthodox.
The Pope is calling for an International Pluralistic religion, centered around himself. It is not difficult to see where this is all going, since he himself makes that clear; “It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.” The Roman Catholic doctrine of economic Distributism is clearly the end he proposes. What is Distributism? According to their website, it is a lot like Communism, Socialism and Marxism.
The question Bible-believing Christians face is this; how can one who speaks like the Pope does in this speech, at the same time believe even the most basic teachings of the Bible? Can such a person still be said to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, or the Apostle’s Creed and give a speech like this?
Dear brothers and sisters,
This blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions.
Here, where Abraham our father lived, we seem to have returned home. It was here that Abraham heard God’s call; it was from here that he set out on a journey that would change history.
We are the fruits of that call and that journey. God asked Abraham to raise his eyes to heaven and to count its stars.
In those stars, he saw the promise of his descendants; he saw us.
Today we, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with our brothers and sisters of other religions, honour our father Abraham by doing as he did: we look up to heaven and we journey on earth.
We look up to heaven.
Thousands of years later, as we look up to the same sky, those same stars appear. They illumine the darkest nights because they shine together.
Heaven thus imparts a message of unity: the Almighty above invites us never to separate ourselves from our neighbours.
The otherness of God points us towards others, towards our brothers and sisters.
Yet if we want to preserve fraternity, we must not lose sight of heaven.
May we – the descendants of Abraham and the representatives of different religions – sense that, above all, we have this role: to help our brothers and sisters to raise their eyes and prayers to heaven.
We all need this because we are not self-sufficient.
Man is not omnipotent; we cannot make it on our own.
If we exclude God, we end up worshipping the things of this earth.
Worldly goods, which lead so many people to be unconcerned with God and others, are not the reason why we journey on earth.
We raise our eyes to heaven in order to raise ourselves from the depths of our vanity; we serve God in order to be set free from enslavement to our egos, because God urges us to love.
This is true religiosity: to worship God and to love our neighbour.
In today’s world, which often forgets or presents distorted images of the Most High, believers are called to bear witness to his goodness, to show his paternity through our fraternity.
From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters.
Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion.
We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion; indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings.
Let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred!
Dark clouds of terrorism, war and violence have gathered over this country. All its ethnic and religious communities have suffered.
In particular, I would like to mention the Yazidi community, which has mourned the deaths of many men and witnessed thousands of women, girls and children kidnapped, sold as slaves, subjected to physical violence and forced conversions.
Today, let us pray for those who have endured these sufferings, for those who are still dispersed and abducted, that they may soon return home.
And let us pray that freedom of conscience and freedom of religion will everywhere be recognised and respected; these are fundamental rights, because they make us free to contemplate the heaven for which we were created.
When terrorism invaded the north of this beloved country, it wantonly destroyed part of its magnificent religious heritage, including the churches, monasteries and places of worship of various communities.
Yet, even at that dark time, some stars kept shining.
I think of the young Muslim volunteers of Mosul, who helped to repair churches and monasteries, building fraternal friendships on the rubble of hatred, and those Christians and Muslims who today are restoring mosques and churches together.
Professor Ali Thajeel spoke too of the return of pilgrims to this city.
It is important to make pilgrimages to holy places, for it is the most beautiful sign on earth of our yearning for heaven.
To love and protect holy places, therefore, is an existential necessity, in memory of our father Abraham, who in various places raised to heaven altars of the Lord.
May the great Patriarch help us to make our respective sacred places oases of peace and encounter for all!
By his fidelity to God, Abraham became a blessing for all peoples; may our presence here today, in his footsteps, be a sign of blessing and hope for Iraq, for the Middle East and for the whole world.
Heaven has not grown weary of the earth: God loves every people, every one of his daughters and sons!
Let us never tire of looking up to heaven, of looking up to those same stars that, in his day, our father Abraham contemplated.
We journey on earth.
For Abraham, looking up to heaven, rather than being a distraction, was an incentive to journey on earth, to set out on a path that, through his descendants, would lead to every time and place.
It all started from here, with the Lord who brought him forth from Ur.
His was a journey outward, one that involved sacrifices.
Abraham had to leave his land, home and family.
Yet by giving up his own family, he became the father of a family of peoples.
Something similar also happens to us: on our own journey, we are called to leave behind those ties and attachments that, by keeping us enclosed in our own groups, prevent us from welcoming God’s boundless love and from seeing others as our brothers and sisters.
We need to move beyond ourselves, because we need one another.
The pandemic has made us realise that “no one is saved alone”.
Still, the temptation to withdraw from others is never-ending, yet at the same time we know that “the notion of ‘every man for himself’ will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all that would prove worse than any pandemic”.
Amid the tempests we are currently experiencing, such isolation will not save us.
Nor will an arms race or the erection of walls that will only make us all the more distant and aggressive.
Nor the idolatry of money, for it closes us in on ourselves and creates chasms of inequality that engulf humanity.
Nor can we be saved by consumerism, which numbs the mind and deadens the heart.
The way that heaven points out for our journey is another: the way of peace.
It demands, especially amid the tempest, that we row together on the same side.
It is shameful that, while all of us have suffered from the crisis of the pandemic, especially here, where conflicts have caused so much suffering, anyone should be concerned simply for his own affairs.
There will be no peace without sharing and acceptance, without a justice that ensures equity and advancement for all, beginning with those most vulnerable.
There will be no peace unless peoples extend a hand to other peoples.
There will be no peace as long as we see others as them and not us.
There will be no peace as long as our alliances are against others, for alliances of some against others only increase divisions.
Peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity.
Let us ask for this in praying for the whole Middle East. Here I think especially of neighbouring war-torn Syria.
The Patriarch Abraham, who today brings us together in unity, was a prophet of the Most High.
An ancient prophecy says that the peoples “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”.
This prophecy has not been fulfilled; on the contrary, swords and spears have turned into missiles and bombs.
From where, then, can the journey of peace begin?
From the decision not to have enemies.
Anyone with the courage to look at the stars, anyone who believes in God, has no enemies to fight.
He or she has only one enemy to face, an enemy that stands at the door of the heart and knocks to enter.
That enemy is hatred.
While some try to have enemies more than to be friends, while many seek their own profit at the expense of others, those who look at the stars of the promise, those who follow the ways of God, cannot be against someone, but for everyone.
They cannot justify any form of imposition, oppression and abuse of power; they cannot adopt an attitude of belligerence.
Dear friends, is all this possible?
Father Abraham, who was able to hope against all hope, encourages us.
Throughout history, we have frequently pursued goals that are overly worldly and journeyed on our own, but with the help of God, we can change for the better.
It is up to us, today’s humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instruments of peace.
It is up to us to appeal firmly to the leaders of nations to make the increasing proliferation of arms give way to the distribution of food for all.
It is up to us to silence mutual accusations in order to make heard the cry of the oppressed and discarded in our world: all too many people lack food, medicine, education, rights and dignity!
It is up to us to shed light on the shady maneuvers that revolve around money and to demand that money not end up always and only reinforcing the unbridled luxury of a few.
It is up to us preserve our common home from our predatory aims.
It is up to us to remind the world that human life has value for what it is and not for what it has.
That the lives of the unborn, the elderly, migrants and men and women, whatever the colour of their skin or their nationality, are always sacred and count as much as the lives of everyone else!
It is up to us to have the courage to lift up our eyes and look at the stars, the stars that our father Abraham saw, the stars of the promise.
The journey of Abraham was a blessing of peace.
Yet it was not easy: he had to face struggles and unforeseen events.
We too have a rough journey ahead, but like the great Patriarch, we need to take concrete steps, to set out and seek the face of others, to share memories, gazes and silences, stories and experiences.
I was struck by the testimony of Dawood and Hasan, a Christian and a Muslim who, undaunted by the differences between them, studied and worked together.
Together they built the future and realised that they are brothers. In order to move forward, we too need to achieve something good and concrete together.
This is the way, especially for young people, who must not see their dreams cut short by the conflicts of the past!
It is urgent to teach them fraternity, to teach them to look at the stars.
This is a real emergency; it will be the most effective vaccine for a future of peace. For you, dear young people, are our present and our future!
Only with others can the wounds of the past be healed.
Rafah told us of the heroic example of Najy, from the Sabean Mandean community, who lost his life in an attempt to save the family of his Muslim neighbour.
How many people here, amid the silence and indifference of the world, have embarked upon journeys of fraternity!
Rafah also told us of the unspeakable sufferings of the war that forced many to abandon home and country in search of a future for their children.
Thank you, Rafah, for having shared with us your firm determination to stay here, in the land of your fathers.
May those who were unable to do so, and had to flee, find a kindly welcome, befitting those who are vulnerable and suffering.
It was precisely through hospitality, a distinctive feature of these lands, that Abraham was visited by God and given the gift of a son, when it seemed that all hope was past.
Brothers and sisters of different religions, here we find ourselves at home, and from here, together, we wish to commit ourselves to fulfilling God’s dream that the human family may become hospitable and welcoming to all his children; that looking up to the same heaven, it will journey in peace on the same earth.
Charles d’Espeville is a Minister in the Reformed Church in America.