Lifting and Trusting

“To you, oh Lord, I lift up my soul.  Oh my God, in you I trust.”  (psalm 25:1, ESV)

Lifting and trusting; I can’t have one without the other.  David isn’t just being poetically repetitive here.

In lifting my soul to the Lord, I envision this movement of taking hold of a bright light somewhere within my chest and then raising it up above my head as an offering.  It is a dangerous exercise putting that bright light in someone else’s care.  If that bright light goes out, I go out.  But it is God, right?  I should be able to trust Him, right?

I worry about money, about the health of my family, about doing meaningful work.  And I realize it is kind of hard to trust God – hard to lift up my soul- when these other concerns dominate my thoughts and somehow lower my hands from above my head.

Yet, as much as these worries are distractions, I can also leverage them as reality checks. If I’m honest, there’s not much I can do on my own to guarantee security financially, health-wise or meaning-wise.  But even if I could, those actually would be rather foolish, short-term successes rather than seeking the success of a healthy, eternal soul.

And what do I know about pursuing a healthy soul if it is not found in any of those securities?  Not much.  Okay, it only makes sense to trust God and lift up my soul.  Now, beyond that picture of raising a bright light above my head, what exactly does it mean to lift up my soul?

Waiting’s Role

“May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you.” Psalm 25:21 (ESV)

I am struck that relying on integrity and uprightness should preserve me.  It really seems quite novel. Everyone knows it is rarely the good guys who get ahead.  This knowledge doesn’t just belong to our postmodern era; 3000 years ago, David regularly bemoaned the fact that ‘the wicked’ apparently flourished while the weak continued downtrodden.

But the other thing that makes me uncomfortable with this verse is my Evangelical Orthodoxy.  If I am saved by grace alone, how can I rely on my own integrity and uprightness to do me any good?

So on at least two counts, being preserved by my own character seems quite novel.  There is however a curious qualifier which helps shed some light on this idea: “…for I wait for you.”

This waiting can go two ways.  Either a) waiting is what activates integrity and uprightness to a potency powerful enough to preserve me.  Or b) integrity and uprightness can preserve me on their own, but I get these character traits only by waiting.

I think this hair splitting is important because Biblical waiting is a very active posture.  And it is hard to actively wait when I haven’t really thought through waiting’s role.

Very likely, this is a ‘both / and’ situation here.  I get integrity and uprightness through waiting for God.  And my integrity and uprightness are of any help only if I wait for God.  Wow, that’s a lot of waiting.  Quite humbling.  Can’t I do anything on my own?

Oh yeah, earlier in the same Psalm it says, “Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he instructs sinners in the way.  He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.”

Uprightness starts in God.  But it is the humble, waiting posture that will surely transfer God’s own character to us.  It sure is hard to learn anything without a humble outlook.  It might be yet harder to learn something when you’re in a rush.

Lord, thank you that your character, your ways are available for me to embrace.  I want to own uprightness and integrity.  Not just any uprightness and integrity, but yours.  Grant me the patience to wait on you, to learn from you.  And then, I’ll keep waiting, trusting that the transformation you bring about in me is full of power to preserve me and bring you great glory.  In Christ, Amen.