Promises And Pronouncements

Christian blessing is a realizing that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” As we learn to give and to share, our vitality increases, and the people around us become fruitful vines and olive shoots at our tables.

The blessings that are promised to, pronounced upon and experienced by Christians do not of course exclude difficulties. The Bible never indicates that. But the difficulties are not inherent in the faith: they come from the outside in the form of temptations, seductions, pressures. Not a day goes by but what we have to deal with that ancient triple threat that Christians in the Middle Ages summarized under the headings of the world, the flesh and the devil: the world—the society of proud and arrogant humankind that defies and tries to eliminate God’s rule and presence in history; the flesh—the corruption that sin has introduced into our very appetites and instincts; and the devil—the malignant will that tempts and seduces us away from the will of God. We have to contend with all of that. We are in a battle. There is a fight of faith to be waged.

But the way of faith itself is in tune with what God has done and is doing. The road we travel is the well-traveled road of discipleship. It is not a way of boredom or despair or confusion. It is not a miserable groping but a way of blessing.

There are no tricks involved in getting in on this life of blessing, and no luck required. We simply become Christians and begin the life of faith. We acknowledge God as our maker and lover and accept Christ as the means by which we can be in living relationship with God. We accept the announced and proclaimed truth that God is at the center of our existence, find out how he has constructed this world (his creation), how he has provided for our redemption, and proceed to walk in that way. In the plain words of the psalm: “All you who fear GOD, how blessed you are! how happily you walk on his smooth straight road!”

“Fear GOD.” Reverence might be a better word. Awe. The Bible isn’t interested in whether we believe in God or not. It assumes that everyone more or less does. What it is interested in is the response we have to him: Will we let God be as he is, majestic and holy, vast and wondrous, or will we always be trying to whittle him down to the size of our small minds, insist on confining him within the boundaries we are comfortable with, refuse to think of him other than in images that are convenient to our lifestyle? But then we are not dealing with the God of creation and the Christ of the cross, but with a dime-store reproduction of something made in our image, usually for commercial reasons. To guard against all such blasphemous chumminess with the Almighty, the Bible talks of the fear of the Lord—not to scare us but to bring us to awesome attention before the overwhelming grandeur of God, to shut up our whining and chattering and stop our running and fidgeting so that we can really see him as he is and listen to him as he speaks his merciful, life-changing words of forgiveness.

“Walk on his smooth straight road.” Not only do we let God be God as he really is, but we start doing the things for which he made us. We take a certain route; we follow certain directions; we do specified things. There are ethical standards to follow, there are moral values to foster, there are spiritual disciplines to practice, there is social justice to pursue, there are personal relationships to develop. None of it is difficult to understand. “Mere ethics,” quipped Austin Farrer once, “call for no such august or mysterious explanation; next to plumbing, morality is social convenience number one.”6

Because of the ambiguities of the world we live in and the defects in our own wills, we will not do any of this perfectly and without fault. But that isn’t the point. The way is plain—walk in it. Keeping the rules and obeying the commands is only common sense. People who are forever breaking the rules, trying other roads, attempting to create their own system of values and truth from scratch, spend most of their time calling up someone to get them out of trouble and help repair the damage, and then ask the silly question “What went wrong?” As H. H. Farmer said, “If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters.”

Some who read Psalm 128 will say, “Of course, that’s the way it is with me. Doesn’t everyone feel that?” Others will only be puzzled by how anyone could sing such a cheerful song in such a messed-up world. John Henry Newman once explained it this way: “If I want to travel north and all the roads are cut to the east, of course I shall complain of the roads. I shall find nothing but obstacles; I shall have to surmount walls, and cross rivers, and go round about, and after all fail of my end.” Such is the conduct of those who are trying to achieve some meaning in their lives, pursuing their right to happiness, but refusing to take the well-traveled roads that lead there. They are trying to get to Mount Zion but ignore all the signposts and compass readings and stubbornly avoid the trails as they bushwhack their way through wilderness. “Do you not see that they necessarily must meet with thwartings, crossings, disappointments, and failure?” They go mile after mile, watching for their destination but never sighting it. “And then they accuse religion of interfering with what they consider their innocent pleasures and wishes.” But religion is an inconvenience only to those who are traveling against the grain of creation, at cross-purposes with the way that leads to redemption.7

Everyone wants to be happy, to be blessed. Too many people are willfully refusing to pay attention to the One who wills our happiness and ignorantly supposing that the Christian way is a harder way to get what they want than doing it on their own. They are wrong. God’s ways and God’s presence are where we experience the happiness that lasts. Do it the easy way: “All you who fear GOD, how blessed you are! how happily you walk on his smooth straight road!”