Tag: Psalms

push pause

[6 minutes, 1192 words]

“WE COULD ALL do with a pause. Our world is saturated by unnecessary noise. On a recent trip around Britain I was constantly reminded of lines by Wendell Berry, “Best of any song is bird song in the quiet, but first you must have the quiet.” I searched in vain. Everywhere I went, pubs, restaurants, hotel lobbies, even a dentist’s waiting room, all were filled with either pounding music or the inane drivel of a TV chat show. And don’t get me started on mobile phones!

I climbed Mount Snowdon on a crisp and uniquely still winter’s day. When I reached the summit, alone, the view at 3,000 feet was spectacular. But the silence and a wonderful experience of wilderness were soon shattered by — you’ve guessed it — a septuagenarian, who didn’t even wait to get his breath back before whipping out his little phone to bawl his banal news in an endless stream of calls to friends, never once mentioning where he was or what he could see!”

– Ian Skelly, From Resurgence & Ecologist Issue 228 • Jan/Feb 2005

I read recently there are now 8.3 billion mobile phones in use around the world. Fun fact: there are approximately 8.3 billion people living on our planet right now. You get a cell phone! You get a cell phone! Everybody gets a cell phone! “We are becoming dangerously dependent upon useless information, and feed a growing habit for voyeurism with a mountain of contraptions” (Ian Skelly). Two billion television sets are in use globally. 6.5-12 billion computer screens are being looked at any given time around the world.

Does the world feel noisy to you? The psalmist mentions a “noisome pestilence” (Psalm 91:3, KJV) as one of the plagues that disrupt our need for peace and solace. Of course, the Hebrew word has nothing to do with loud sounds but I rather like the interesting choice of word from the good old King James.

It is still no less true that we are under assault with bothersome noise. The very next verse tells us that God covers us with his feathers and tucks us in his wings as a buffer against the raging of the world. I can’t help but think of noise canceling headphones!

I pray you find a way to “push pause” on the unwelcome ruckus that clamors for your attention. May God blessedly cover your ears and lay you gently down beside His tranquil streams.

update from my corner of exile

It’s been a minute since I’ve shared any personal updates so I best hop to it. A lot has happened since I last sat down with you, so let me start with the more recent and work my way backward.

Four days ago, on Saturday morning, I woke up to a literal puddle of blood and drainage from my hip. You might recall that I have mentioned a large collection of fluid I have carried inside me for over a year. Numerous attempts to aspirate it have proven unsuccessful — the goop or soup or whatever it is has been too thick and ‘gelatinous’ to extract even a small sample. Over a dozen attempts have been made by interventional radiologists, both outpatient and inpatient. Their conclusion? As long as it’s contained, and you are not feverish and sick, we will just take a wait-and-see approach.

So last Friday evening, I went to bed with dry sheets and nary a hole in my hip. Seven hours later, there was a hole in my hip with gouts of blood and drainage pouring out. Nonstop. For several hours. Welcome to Scott Mitchell’s world.

It is now Wednesday morning, and in a few hours I am going to see, at my doctor’s behest, a surgeon who will determine next steps, and whether or not it is time for a more invasive exploration rather than just jabbing at the area with needles.

The same surgeon and I have had some recent experience together. Less than three weeks ago, he poked four holes in my stomach with spidery robot arms in order to remove my gallbladder. Gallbladders have been a thing in my family; both my mom and dad had theirs removed, as well as my grandmother. Four hours later, I was upright and heading home.

We’ve been in Florida since Spring 2022 and for almost 4 years my health had been uncharacteristically good. 2026 is another story. Even so, I feel doubly and triply blessed! The healthcare I have received in Florida through every MRI, CT scan, ultrasound, IR procedure and hospitalization has been amazing. No complaints from this old guy.

ministry update

Sandy and I have become even more invested in our home church. I continue to be a table facilitator for our Thursday night men’s Bible study. I was on the teaching rotation, but stepped away from that for a season because the Lord opened the door for me to be on the teaching team for the youth ministry on Wednesday nights.

Sandy spoke to a large gathering of women from our church in August. Many women who were there have told me — and continue to tell me — what a blessing she was. Sandy also made a sizable impact on quite a few teenage girls who joined their mothers for the event. I’m tickled pink by how God continues to use her in a variety of ways.

One-to-one discipleship continues to be the main thing I do. If you had told me twenty years ago that I would enjoy sitting across the table from a guy, drinking coffee and discussing spiritual formation would be more exciting than preaching, I would have said you were nuts. It’s true, though. Personal discipleship is my profound joy and I can see myself doing it — with gusto — the rest of my life.

Our pastor recently nominated me to be part of the elder team and the process is pretty much complete. I will join another candidate for the laying on of hands ceremony in one of our upcoming Sunday services. Very little will change about my ministry responsibilities. As one of our staff pastors told me, “We’re just ratifying you in the same ministry you’ve been doing here all along.”

Before signing off, I’d like to briefly revisit the initial thought of this post. May I again encourage us to seek the quiet and solitude of Christ for the sake of our souls? Life can be such a heavy, noisome thing for all of us. I think this beautiful prayer by St. John of the Cross is just the way to push pause, orient our hearts heavenward, and re-order our spiritual affections:

O blessed Jesus,
Grant me stillness of soul in Thee.
Let Thy mighty calmness reign in me;
Reign in me, O Thou King of gentleness, King of peace.
Give me control, great power of self-control,
Control over my words, thoughts, and actions.
From all irritability, lack of meekness, lack of gentleness,
O dear Lord, deliver me.
By Thine own deep patience, give me patience,
Stillness of soul in Thee.
Make me in this and all things more and more like Thee.

Selah, beloved.

preaching to myself

[4 minutes, 710 words]

Do you talk to yourself? I do, and fairly often I might add. Don’t judge. I’ve heard it’s actually a pretty healthy activity that helps improve one’s cognitive function. It’s also an indicator that you’re a verbal processor, aiding in clarifying thoughts and solving problems. Self-talk does become problematic if one were to, say, carry on an entire conversation with one’s self — out loud, mind you — in the supermarket, on the public bus, or while waiting in line at the Chikfila.

Psalm 42 offers a classic example of why it’s so important to preach the gospel to ourselves when we are starting to go dark. One of Israel’s ordained worship leaders1 was shaken to his core.2 He had hard questions for God. He asks why He’s not coming through for him eleven different times. It’s an intensely personal psalm, packed with 50 personal pronouns.

In the middle of his pity party, this anonymous son of Korah recognizes how asinine his accusations against God have been and gives himself a good talking to.

Why, my soul, are you so dejected?
Why are you in such turmoil?
Put your hope in God,
for I will still praise him,
my Savior and my God.

And for good measure he chastises himself once again — using the very same words — at the end of his psalm3. Apparently, he’s a lot like you and me: we need to remind ourselves we aren’t God, we don’t know everything, and we aren’t always our own best counselors.

I pray this often: Lord, give me a love for Your Truth so that I will not be deceived. I don’t even want to deceive myself!

The Apostle Paul gravely warned the Corinthian believers:

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool so that he can become wise.

1 Corinthians 3:18

When’s the last time you’ve had a sure enough come-to-Jesus meeting with yourself? Is it long overdue? Sitting and stewing and spewing out dark words without reprimand will harden you over time. If left unchecked, unbridled blame and bitterness will stain your soul.

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression

————————-

“Don’t just listen to your worries, preach to them.”

– Michael Reeves

The psalmist wearied of listening to the sound of his own voice. His vinegar words were like hot desert sand in his throat, drying up his reserves of inner peace and consolation.4 His onerous self-talk sounded like this:

God, don’t you care about me?5

Why should I trust you?

I’ve prayed and prayed until I’m blue in the face; you don’t listen. What good are my prayers?

I thought you were good. I guess not.

If you are entertaining these thoughts, it’s time to tear up that script and find another. If that kind of language is living in your heart, repent. Find a better sermon to preach to yourself.

Hey yo, I’m preaching to myself.

Every time I’ve said, “God, can’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you fix this?” (which is more often than I’m comfortable admitting), I’ve heard the Lord’s voice in my ear say, “What makes you think I don’t see? What makes you so sure I don’t have this?”

Why my soul are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God! C’mon, Scott, you know better!

I’m such a dunderhead sometimes. In those wildly unattractive moments, I need to stop listening to myself and start talking to myself. I need a long-winded, Spirit-led, grace-filled, life-changing sermon to get me to the altar.

Join me in this new year, won’t you, and may we reform our ways; let’s stop listening to our thoughts and emotions and begin preaching a better gospel to ourselves.

As such, we should take a page from the psalmist’s playbook:

  • Put your hope in God6
  • Praise Him in all things
  • Remember all the many other times He’s come through for you7
  • Never question how much He loves you…unfailingly so8
  • Trust in God’s round-the-clock protection9

Selah, beloved.

  1. The signature for this psalm is given as a “son of Korah.” Such were entrusted with the organization and implementation of temple worship ↩︎
  2. “turmoil,” v5, pictures a loud moaning that can erupt into a scream; Jeremiah uses it in Jer. 4:19 to describe his anguished heart beating loudly inside him ↩︎
  3. Psalm 42:11 ↩︎
  4. Psalm 42:1-3 ↩︎
  5. Psalm 42:9 ↩︎
  6. Psalm 42:5, 11 ↩︎
  7. Psalm 42:6 ↩︎
  8. Psalm 42:7 ↩︎
  9. Psalm 42:8 ↩︎

going out weeping, coming home rejoicing

[4 minutes]

They weep as they go to plant their seed,
but they sing as they return with the harvest.

Psalm 126:6

The Bible isn’t a guidebook, it is a life book. It’s not a collection of principles to live by, but life-giving truth to rest in.

With refreshing transparency, Andrée Seu Peterson confessed her once weak-kneed approach to scripture during a particularly painful season of grief. While “grousing” she read from another writer who leaned hard into the Word of God in her own similar season of trial.

In her book Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, Andrée Seu said she was more prone to “pursue minimum Christianity: saved by the blood, but entitled to grouse.” Patti McCarthy Broderick, however, believed when the Bible said ‘suffering produces character and character hope,’ it means that suffering produces character and character, hope.’*

Andrée Seu:

I, on the other hand, have interposed a baroque system of hermeneutics between the Bible and my life. I have seminary training. Unlike simple people who obey the Bible because they don’t realize how complicated it is, I find ambiguity in every verse. I don’t obey scripture, I discuss it.

She and Broderick had both heard the same statistics and psychological findings regarding the ‘natural’ course of grief and the amount of time needed to ‘process’ it. “I went with the statistics and gave myself permission to be as bad as I wanted to be. She, more simple-minded, files the following report: ‘So I chose instead to bank my life on scripture being true, and I was not going to let even well-meaning Christians talk me out of it’… 

Of Broderick, Andrée Seu said, “She took the Bible as practical…She made a conscious choice to trust in God, to take his word as truth, to see opportunity, and to wear his praises publicly on her lips. And she did not find him disappointing.”

It’s necessary to draw a distinction here between distrustful whining and trusting God even as we grieve. Some sorrows run so deep they may take years to heal. But at the heart of Psalm 126 is a promise that will never disappoint.

jerald

I still recall my friend Jerald’s beautiful exposition of this verse. Jerald served as my right hand man for several years when I was pastor in Douglasville, Georgia. I remember his teaching as if it was yesterday.

Picture it: God directs a farmer to take the precious seed, the last seed in the barn, and plant it in the dry soil of his field. It hasn’t rained for weeks.

What? Waste my seed? Why would I do that? How will my family survive?

See him as he kneels in the dust, taking the last of the seed and putting it into the dry ground. He’s risking everything on God’s coming through for his starving family. Tears fill his eyes as he surrenders to the soil, praying with uncertainty. He looks up at the sky. No clouds. He writes his sweaty brow. The seed does no good in his hands, so he presses it into the hard-packed earth.

The next week he hears thunder. He rushes outside and sees dark clouds filling the sky! Torrents of rain wash down on the farmer’s fields. The ground is suddenly bathed in precious streams of living water, as valuable to him as if he discovered gold.

He had wept when he planted the last of the seed but now he rejoices because he knows the Almighty has heard his cries and has seen his sacrifice. The farmer now laughs as he stands under the showers with arms raised to the sky…

I sat by Jerald’s hospice bed one Sunday morning when he quietly slipped off into eternity. Marie, his wife (and one of my regular readers!), joined me in singing as many verses as we could remember of Leaning On The Everlasting Arms as we kept vigil. Somewhere in the middle of the hymn, Jerald left this earthen sod.

In in his lifetime Jerald wept much because of cancer, but Marie and I were witnesses to the exact moment when her husband heard God’s gentle thunder inviting him Home. He took flight from his sick bed to where the fields of grace are always green, always growing, always lush with crops. I believe Jerald was laughing when he saw Jesus.

those who dream

Beloved, one day your soul’s deepest cries will be heard and you will be as one of those who dream about reaching the crest of the last hill after a long wilderness journey. Every thorn and desert, each and every stream of bitter water, and all the giants who towered over you and made you feel weak and unprotected, they will all be behind you, drowned in a sea of forgetfulness.

Oh, but beloved, it’s not a dream. It’s a promise for us too, not just for an ancient people who were just like us. Trust the Almighty Tear-Wiper. You will not find Him disappointing.

Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!

Psalm 126:5

One final word: this promise is not merely for those who cry in this life, but for those who are willing to sow their seed — trusting, believing, hoping — in the midst of their tears. They will be the ones dancing in the rain.

Selah, beloved.

*from her book He Said, “Press”: Hearing God Through Grief by Patti McCarthy Broderick