Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle?
who may abide upon your holy hill?
To read this psalm is to find oneself recalling George Herbert’s poem entitled “Love.” As well as being a beautiful piece of English poetry, it is also a magnificent spiritual statement. “Love bade me welcome,” writes Herbert, “yet my soul drew back, guiltie of dust and sinne.”
The dialogue between the guest and Love himself continues until the diffident guest is persuaded to accept Love’s insistent invitation. The guest feels he is not worthy. For Love this is irrelevant. “You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat.” If this psalm does indeed bring Herbert’s poem to mind, it may be because of the way the poet challenges the theme of this psalm.
The psalmist stands with me before God’s “holy hill.” I hear the conditions that must be met if I am to reach the tabernacle of God. But as soon as I hear the conditions, I am already defeated! “Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right.” Blameless! Always? Doing what is right! Always? I am tempted to turn away in frustration from the upward path.
The other conditions are equally uncompromising. “No guile upon his tongue.” Never a slanting of the truth to allow me to survive in some situation? “No evil to his friend.” What of the many hurts I have received, even if unintentional? “In his sight the wicked is rejected, but he honours those who fear the Lord.” Is it so easy to divide our world into the wicked and the good, oneself always numbered among the good?
There are more conditions, but already there are too many. As I walk away from this impossible “hill,” I hear a final assurance given with the best of intentions: “Whoever does these things shall never be overthrown.” But I cannot do all these things. I am already overthrown, and I walk away.
Because I long for God, as does every human being, I turn and gaze sadly back at the mountain. As I look, I see a figure walking down, beckoning to me as Love beckons to the guest in Herbert’s poem. I respond to the gesture and return to the upward path.
Now the invitation is given again, but in a different way. I must still climb if I wish to stand in a holy place, but now I can climb with a companion, one who has done what I cannot do—live blamelessly in this world. I do not have to pretend to be more than I truly am. I have neither to boast of my qualities nor apologize for my shortcomings.
I am accepted in this once unattainable high place, not for my worth but for the incomparable worth of Jesus, who is both companion and Lord.
Are there things you have achieved in life, or personal qualities you have developed, that please you? Make a list of them. Thank God for all the good people and things in your life. Ask God to comfort and support those who feel undeserving and unworthy.
O Lord, you are my portion and my cup;
it is you who uphold my lot
We live in a culture that mistrusts value judgements. If at all possible, we try to avoid making them. Such an attitude is utterly irreconcilable with the world of the psalms.
In our culture, to say, “All my delight is upon the godly” and the “noble among the people,” commending those who are committed to the same concept of God as myself, may be barely acceptable. But to dismiss those who have chosen otherwise, and aspire to “run after other gods,” is quite unacceptable unless we are prepared to enter a world of fundamentalist religious stance.
To go even further, to promise trouble for those who differ from us in matters of religious faith, to say that they “shall have their troubles multiplied,” puts us outside the bounds of moral behaviour.
Beyond these opening verses the psalm has much that we can heartily agree to. For us, God can indeed be “my portion and my cup,” the source of nourishment and satisfaction for the hunger and thirst of our spirits.
It is indeed God who sustains us in the stresses and challenges of daily living, “who uphold[s] my lot.” It is indeed the Holy Spirit of God who makes us aware of blessings already received, and helps us to appreciate the ways that life can sometimes be “a pleasant land” and “a goodly heritage.” It is indeed God who can be our source of guidance, “who gives me counsel.”
Notice how the psalmist roams through three levels of human experience and claims that God brings grace into all of them. First he maintains that the “heart teaches me, night after night.” We know the truth of this. It is often during our night musings that we come to see things with a clarity that eludes us in the day’s busyness.
Then there is the claim that, to sense the presence of God in our ongoing activities—that God is “at my right hand”—helps us to stand firm in the face of what life can bring. We will be given courage and stamina to persevere.
Finally the psalmist dares to claim the ultimate. He trusts that the presence of God will be with us at the moment of death itself, and even beyond death. “You will not abandon me to the grave.” The psalm ends with a lovely, almost extravagant expectation of “the path of life … fullness of joy … pleasures for evermore.” With God we will know ultimate fulfillment.
Every day things happen to make you happy or sad. Every day decisions need to be made. Consider sharing happenings with God, and checking decisions with God, in daily conversation. Continually enter God’s presence and listen for God’s guidance.
Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me under the shadow of your wings.
as we read some of the psalms, we find ourselves searching for a contemporary equivalent to the world in which the psalmist lives. His society is one where stark lines are drawn. The psalmist feels there are those who are for him and those who are implacably against him. We search in vain for any middle ground.
For the psalmist there are “his people” and “the others.” For those others, no word or phrase is too harsh. They are “the wicked who assault me.” They are “deadly enemies who surround me.” They speak “proud things.” (We can assume that “proud” means arrogant.) They are “greedy for … prey,” and they are “lurking in secret places.” Their “portion in life [all they think about] is this world.”
Allowing for the fact that not one of us is without those who dislike us, sometimes intensely; allowing that everyone of us may sometimes have bitter rivals, even enemies—it remains true that there are few times in life when we would be prepared to describe our situation in the siege terms the psalmist uses.
One cannot help but detect a strong streak of envy against those who have obviously prospered. Are these people unscrupulous, and do they therefore merit the psalmist’s condemnation? Is their prospering and having children and leaving them well off reprehensible in itself (verse 15)?
Are we listening to a personality who needs to project a dark shadow on to others, so that he himself can be one whose prayer “does not come from lying lips,” who offers a confident “plea of innocence” and can say “I give no offence with my mouth as others do; I have heeded the words of [God’s] lips?”
In this psalm we may be hearing a self-justifying approach to God, the kind that Jesus sternly dismisses in his parable of the two people in the temple. One person informs God of his utter righteousness when compared with others; the other person offers himself without the least illusion about the poverty of his spiritual state.
Our Lord makes it quite clear that a simple plea for acceptance and forgiveness is infinitely