Nielsen’s Nook

70:1 Make haste, O God, to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me!
² Let them be put to shame and confusion
who seek my life!
Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor
who delight in my hurt!
³ Let them turn back because of their shame
who say, “Aha, Aha!”

⁴ May all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you!
May those who love your salvation
say evermore, “God is great!”
⁵ But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O Lord, do not delay!

I have begun to despise those increasing brevities of my life in which it would seem to me that I have no resistance - when things are apparently going well. Inevitably, complacency seeps in - a slow, persistent ebb. Soon my very soul gurgles, weighted down, suddenly waylaid into oblivion.

No people or mere person has ever stayed on the mountaintop, none have ever sustained unbroken fellowship with YHWH. Moses came down Mt. Horeb only to be brought upon Mt. Pisgah to view the promise into which he would not enter on account of his personal failure. In regal grandeur did David - a man after God’s own heart - ascend. Only to be yanked down with a fiercely-barbed hook, rending Israel to pieces and David with her.

We come and have a taste of Jesus and skip back to our ghettos glowing over so little, having held an eye dropper under the waterfall of the River of Life. All the while, Christ would give us all. We have settled for fast food, the cholesterol of which corrupts the very arteries of our souls. We settle for shriveled parsimony, microwaved hot, served on placid platitude; when Christ has given a most laboriously prepared meal of everlasting love and kindness. He has given us himself and would that we feed upon him only, always and everywhere.

It is the rich man who cries out such prayers:

⁵ “But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, Oh God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O YHWH, do not delay!”