Insightful Musings on theScriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Good evening, dear ones.
Interesting day. It’s actually been quite a nice day. No rain. The pleasant weather prompted me to follow through with a request by some nearby property owners needing some tree work. So I activated the boom truck this afternoon. We did a major drop of a big fir that was hung up leaning on another big fir. In trying to move from that setting the truck lost traction in the mud on that hill. At that point darkness was setting in. So I left everything where it was and called Becki to come get me. I have some creative engineering to do tomorrow to get the truck out of that predicament—then get set up to remove a bunch of small diameter alders.
Have a good night.
Love, Dad/Ray.
Consider the words of Jesus when He says, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). Based on that insight, and as we listen in on some of David’s self-talk as in the FOCUS VERSE, what do you suppose he’s been feeding his heart so as to get it to say things like this? Has he just been hanging out with the guys, or reading best-selling novels, or watching Academy Award movies, or watching the news on CNN? This guy has proven to be a bird of a very unusual feather. He actually does a convincing job of practicing what he preaches—or practices what he sings—as in Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked (movies and novels) or stand in the way of sinners (hang out and do the stuff typical airheads do) or sit in the seat of mockers (become a humanist, or, at best, an agnostic). But his delight (time-consuming passion) is in the law of the Lord (His Word, the Bible), and on his law he meditates day and night (constantly overseeing, feeding, replenishing, and training his heart/mind)” (Psalm 1:1-2).
I would be hard pressed to find any piece of creative expression anywhere that more aptly demonstrates a HEART AFTER GOD than David’s lines here in verse 4: “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” That so resonates with what I choose to be my core as to hassle my tear ducts. David, in other words, is articulating his absolute highest priority of life—that nothing is more important than the approval of His presence—continually training his heart to reckon that his very existence is a “God thing.”
then I can answer anyone who treats me with contempt.”
(Note: Try reading this as though it was a direct message from your Heavenly Father to you personally as His child.)