Psalm 119:72 Good Book

No matter what the topic of any given 8-verse stanza, in Psalm 119 David always steers back to the Word. The Good Book.

Meriam Webster says the first known use of the term "the good book" was in 1651. It was an obvious and inevitable phrase people would use to describe the Bible.

By the time I was growing up, from the late 50s through the 70s, the phrase had become a generic term used throughout American culture to describe the Bible, without wandering too much into discussions of God and faith.

People would reference "the Good Book" in conversation, whether or not they were particularly religious or faithful to the Good Book. Often as not, the quote from "the Good Book" might not actually be from the Bible at all, or it might be a corrupted version of an actual verse.

This clip from Fiddler on the Roof, a Broadway musical written and first performed in the 1960s, reflects this usage of the term:

The phrase continues to be used this way in the 21st century.

I think most people mean well when they reference "the Good Book", but too often they're actually downgrading the Bible by the way they use it. They seem to be giving it credit for being a book with some good stories and with plenty of good quotes. But that's not at all the same as David's description of it.

The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.

Psalm 119:72

Collections of good quotes are plentiful. The internet is bursting with resources for good quotes, even good quotes from the Bible.

On the Goodreads.com page devoted to Holy Bible: New International Version, the author is listed as Anonymous. As with most other books, Goodreads members have posted their favorite quotes from The Bible. There are 299 quotes listed for this particular version, ranging from the ubiquitous John 3:16 to this one from Leviticus 19:16, which is certainly not from the NIV:

Thou shalt not stand idly by.

Whether believers or unbelievers, Christians or atheists, people do love to quote "the Good Book" to suit their own purposes and advance their own agendas. Few, though, use it in a way that shows they value the words from God's mouth more than a precious fortune in material wealth, as David did.

Many believers claim to value the Bible as the final authority on life and godliness. But by their handling of it they betray the true value they place on it, as a tool to defend and prop up their own theologies and way of life. And, for too many, it's a weapon to beat down anyone who believes or behaves differently.

David, the warrior, knew the power of God's Law as a weapon. A millenium before Paul wrote Ephesians 6:17 and Hebrews 4:12, David knew the Word of God is a sword, filled with divine power when used to do surgery on his own heart. He learned this by going through the bad times and struggling mightily to find the good in himself and the good in God's purposes.

Only when we use God's Word as a blazing scalpel on ourselves will we understand the true value of "the Good Book".

Psalm 119:71 Good Books

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.

Psalm 119:71

Many people struggle with the idea that suffering and affliction is a good thing.

David: You know the shortest verse of the Bible, Jacob?

Jacob: No

David: Jesus wept.

Jacob: Jesus wept...

David: One of the biggest problems we have with people today is for some reason they have it in their head that they shouldn't have any troubles, that suffering is a mistake, or it's unfair, or it's God being ornery. But what if suffering is the point? So that we can learn to let go and be easy in the Spirit. 

This quote comes from the Paramount Network limited TV series Waco. It's a conversation between cult leader David Koresh and an ATF agent. It represents an extreme interpretation of scriptures about suffering.

Believing "suffering is the point" led Koresh to seek out suffering, not only for himself, but for the people who followed his cult.

The point is not to suffer, and not to "let go and be easy", but to follow God. His reasons and His methods aren't always easy to understand, but the key is to seek to understand Him though His Word.

There are no simple answers or easy explanations for affliction. To even try in a short blog post risks reducing it to platitudes and over-simplification.

So instead I'll quote some excellent books that I highly recommend. Ann Voskamp, Joni Eareckson-Tada and Frederick Buechner's all tell a long tale of a life lived and the long road to understanding the reasons for suffering.

The only way to learn about affliction is to learn from affliction. These books will help along your journey.

From Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are:

All these years, these angers, these hardenings, this desire to control, I had thought I had to snap the hand closed to shield joy’s fragile flame from the blasts. In a storm of struggles, I had tried to control the elements, clasp the fist tight so as to protect self and happiness. But palms curled into protective fists fill with darkness. I feel that sharply, even in this … and this realization in all its full emptiness: My own wild desire to protect my joy at all costs is the exact force that kills my joy.
. . .
Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy's fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy's flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust. 

From Joni Eareckson Tada, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty

Gut-wrenching questions honor God. Despair directed at God is a way of encountering him, opening ourselves up to the One and only Someone who can actually do something about our plight. And whether we, like Greg, collide with the Almighty or simply bump up against him, we cannot be the same. We never are when we experience God.

From Frederick Buechner, A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory:

The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead. It is through memory that we are able to reclaim much of our lives that we have long since written off by finding that in everything that has happened to us over the years God was offering us possibilities of new life and healing which, though we may have missed them at the time, we can still choose and be brought to life by and healed by all these years later.

Psalm 119:70 The Good Life

The ability to see the good in the troubles of  life doesn't happen in isolation. It requires living intentionally for God in the good times, the bad times, and on the ordinary days.

Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart.Their hearts are callous and unfeeling, but I delight in your law.

Psalm 119:70

In Ephesians 4, Paul describes the difference between the people who are calloused and unfeeling in the face of affliction vs. those who delight in the midst of troubles.

Pay attention to the connecting and transitioning words in his description of the calloused people.

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. (Ephesians 4:17-19)

If you follow the trail of those underlined words, Paul lays out a progression from A to Z.  He describes people whose entire focus in life is on gratifying the desires of their five senses. They've trained their hearts to constantly be on the hunt for new kinds of impurity and new ways to satisfy their greed, doing their best to avoid negative experiences. With their hearts hardened in that pursuit, they become ignorant of what God is really trying to do in their lives. Because of ignorance, they're darkened in their understanding and also separated from the life of God, two things that go hand in hand.

It's all too easy to think, oh sure, I know people like that. Most of us, though, have toyed with pursuing desires to the point of dancing awfully close to the edge of that cliff.

Afflictions and troubles and disasters are a natural result when people pursue their passions over the precipice. To compound the problem, those trivial pursuits have ill prepared them to learn from the hard times. Instead, they respond with more poor choices.

It's going to be difficult for anyone trapped in that downward spiral to see the good in the mess they're in. They don't have the habits or the resources to recognize God's hand at work.

A new perspective only comes through a complete reversal of that lifestyle chain described by Paul. He lays out the return route in a step by step fashion.

That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:20-24)

The way out must begin with Christ. Sure, there are other philosophies that can help people deal with life in a constructive way, but only Christ provides the resources and power and purpose for true transformation. Life in Christ means learning about Christ, learning Christ's plan for put off and put on, and Christ's power to renew your mind and make you into a new person with a new purpose.

Becoming like God and pursuing His righteousness and holiness is the only way to move beyond making lemons out of lemonade toward intentionally turning a desire-centered life into a God-centered life.

Ridesharing: Driven to Serve

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

Mark 10:42-45 42

Becoming a slave to all.

That means being a slave/servant to everyone: to the people you respect, but also to the ones whose lifestyle choices are the opposite of everything you stand for.

How can you stand firmly AGAINST them and yet still be their SLAVE??

Many rideshare pax (that's rideshare-driver lingo for passengers) are headed out for an evening and want to be able to drink whatever they want and not have to think about staying sober enough to drive home.

I’m generally opposed to drunkenness and carousing, as the older versions of the Bible call it. But I’m even more opposed to drunkenness and driving. By giving these folks a ride to their night on the town, I’m acting as their servant. I’m showing my love and concern for their well being (and for the well being of others) by being an integral part of their safe-drinking plans.

Now, I do have limits.

9 PM is when the demand for rideshare starts to really pick up, staying high for the next 5-6 hours, until all the night owls have been driven home safely from the bars.

I’ve chosen not to be an active rideshare driver late at night. Nobody wants me behind the wheel at 2 AM. I’m generally home around 9 PM, when I’m starting to become too tired to drive safely.

I'm also content to let someone else can be their servants at that end of their night on the town. My son also used to drive for rideshare and he was usually starting his rideshare night around the time I was shutting off the app and heading for home. He’s 30 years younger and has always been a night owl. Plus, his day job was as a corrections officer with a county sheriff’s department, so dealing with a few drunks is nothing new for him.

I'm also not going to let pax behave in a way that isn't reasonable or safe (or legal). In my first few weeks driving, I've learned to say No to pax who think I should be willing to let them do whatever they please. I told one group of pax that were headed to a wedding that no, they could not bring their open containers of alcohol with them. Not only is that illegal in Columbia, it's not something I want to be part of.

Driving for rideshare is good way to learn to be a servant to people I might otherwise avoid being around in my normal daily life. Whether the trips are conversation-filled or quiet rides that offer people-watching opportunities, I learn a little about what makes them tick.

People who choose to live differently than me are not, as my son called them when he was little, “those bad people.” Yes, some of what they do is bad, perhaps even evil. But observing them closely shows me the complexity and contradictions in their lives.

I'm also reminded, over and over again, that I too am“one of those bad people.” I behave badly on a daily basis. Sometimes I’m downright evil. I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

I’m generally better at hiding my evil thoughts and lifestyle choices than many of my pax. But being a respectably religious evil person is not better than being a brazenly non-religious evil person.

By seeing myself as very much like my pax, traveling the same rough roads with them, I’m able to humbly serve them. I'm hopefully helping them to wake up to yet another morning and enjoy yet another opportunity to consider the glorious evidence of yet another sunrise.

Psalm 119:69 Goodness Wins

Though the arrogant have smeared me with lies, I keep your precepts with all my heart.

Psalm 119:69

It's personal

The Psalms are a textbook for prayer, but they're not a dry, theoretical treatment of the topic. It's the personal journal of one man's conversations with God on the the road of life.

Each traveler experiences their own troubles along the way.

For David, trouble frequently came in the form of personal attacks. His enemies, in their arrogance, have manufactured every sot of fake news they can piece together to slander him. They've invented creative ways of making their lies appear like truth, and even more clever ways of making their libel stick. David's reputation is in as much peril as his life.

As a shepherd who rose to be become king, David's reputation was precious to him. The temptation to fight liars with lies is great. Or with gossip, ridicule, and political spin.

I find it all too easy to be dispassionate when I read the many Psalms about David's struggles to be a king after God's own heart in the face of attacks and attempted coups. I've never experienced anything like that. I'm not a king. I'm not even a particularly ambitious man, not a career climber.

But while many of David's personal experiences don't match up to my own experiences, his response to those struggles do speak to my life.

When David is being hounded and hunted by Saul and his army (I Samuel 24), David refuses to to take advantage of an opportunity to kill the king, because God had anointed Saul as king.

When David is dealing with his rebellious son Absalom, who wants to take his father's crown (II Samuel 13-18), David repeatedly restrains himself and his soldiers from taking his son's life. Instead, as a man after God's own heart, he bends over backward to be a restorer and reconciler.

When Shimei, a man from Saul's clan, pelts David and his soldiers with stones and curses the king as a murderer (II Samuel 16), David refuses to let one of the guards kill the man. Instead, he takes it as an opportunity to learn a lesson in humility, to accept that he is indeed in need of God's mercy.


When I find myself being mistreated, do I make the choice to seek revenge? Or do I honor God by treating my enemies like I would want to be treated?

When I'm betrayed or abandoned by someone close to me, do I turn the cold shoulder to them? or do I nurture a heart of patience and reconciliation?

When someone dares point out my shortcomings, do I take offense? Or do I take note and seek guidance from God?

It's so easy to take everything too personally, to lash out at the people who dare trample on my dignity. It's much more difficult to turn the situation into an opportunity for God's goodness to change the situation.

Goodness is always the good choice.