Psalm 25:1-22 (links validated 2/5/24)

I think it was Winston Churchill who once noted that when he left home at the age of 18, he did so convinced that his father knew very little about life and surely did not have much he could teach to the headstrong young man Churchill was at the time. But then he noted that some years later after he turned 30 and began to have conversations with his father on various things, it was amazing how much the old man had learned in just 12 short years!

Some time ago I read an article about memory in which the author pointed out that printing written materials was never designed to replace memory but to help us memorize better. But over time, precisely because we have so much that is already written down, the act of memorizing has waned. This is also why we don’t even know the telephone numbers of people we call all the time: they are stored in the phone’s memory so you just hit “Jill” such that if you ever need to call Jill from a phone that is not yours . . . These days if you want to win “Jeopardy” on TV, you had better know a lot in your head. For most of us, though, we don’t need to remember stuff: we can always Google it after all. So it goes with many things, including Scripture...

Sometimes it seems that for all the appeal it has on the surface—and for all the things about it that really are correct—the “What Would Jesus Do?” mantra needs almost as often as not to be replaced with—or at least supplemented by—another question: What Would Jesus NOT Do? What would Jesus NOT say? It sometimes feels like a lot of ugly things that also Christians say and do—sometimes to even fellow Christians on Facebook much less to people who do not share the Christian faith—would be avoided if we wondered what Jesus would not do or say. Jesus would not fire off an email in anger. He would not sneer at another person on Facebook in sarcasm over even some post Jesus himself disagreed with. Jesus would not assign libelous or mean-spirited labels to people of different political viewpoints on certain hot button issues of the day. None of that is to say Jesus would be silent or would fail to address anything he deemed important. But how would he do it? A lot of the time the Gospel indicates he would most assuredly not do it the way too many of us do. And let’s be honest: even if it is genuinely not always easy to answer the question “What Would Jesus Do?”, if we eliminated up front all the things Jesus would NOT do, our lives and the world in general would be a much better place.

Sometimes it seems that for all the appeal it has on the surface—and for all the things about it that really are correct—the “What Would Jesus Do?” mantra needs almost as often as not to be replaced with—or at least supplemented by—another question: What Would Jesus NOT Do? What would Jesus NOT say? It sometimes feels like a lot of ugly things that also Christians say and do—sometimes to even fellow Christians on Facebook much less to people who do not share the Christian faith—would be avoided if we wondered what Jesus would not do or say...

Some time ago I read an article about memory in which the author pointed out that printing written materials was never designed to replace memory but to help us memorize better. But over time, precisely because we have so much that is already written down, the act of memorizing has waned. It is sort of like what happens when you get a telephone which can store twenty or so phone numbers in its memory: eventually you forget the very numbers you call the most frequently. “My phone has memory, I don’t” we sometimes joke. And it’s true. So it goes with many things, including Scripture...

Some time ago I read an article about memory in which the author pointed out that printing written materials was never designed to replace memory but to help us memorize better. But over time, precisely because we have so much that is already written down, the act of memorizing has waned. This is also why we don’t even know the telephone numbers of people we call all the time: they are stored in the phone’s memory so you just hit “Jill” such that if you ever need to call Jill from a phone that is not yours . . . These days if you want to win “Jeopardy” on TV like the recent champ Mr. Holzhauer, you had better know a lot in your head. For most of us, though, we don’t need to remember stuff: we can always look it up on line after all. So it goes with many things, including Scripture. When you’ve got a half-dozen Bibles scattered around your house, you assume that you have such ready access to the Bible that you don’t need to spend much time memorizing its texts or meditating on them. But even as storing a number into the memory of your phone is very different than storing it in your own brain, so also the words in an unopened Bible on the shelf next to the dinner table: those words are not going to float across thin air and somehow become part of who you are. Making them part of your very self requires reading, reflecting, memorizing.

As I reflected on the blessing of knowing God’s ways, several cultural references rose to the surface of my brain from my long forgotten past. I saw Ricky Schroder (remember that adorable little boy) as a fuzzy cheeked young detective in the gritty crime drama, “NYPD Blue.” He is struggling not only with his new job as a homicide detective, but also with his out of control life as a twenty something. He sobs to his partner, “I don’t know how to live my life.” How many twenty somethings would say the same thing today? Instead of inventing a life (the typical postmodern response to the difficulty of living in a rudderless world), why not listen to the Lord who wants to teach us how to live? That old TV series reminded me of all old rock song by the Zombies, “Time of the Season.”...

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The July, 1986 Life magazine dubbed the stretch of US Route 50 that crosses the center of Nevada “The Loneliest Road in America.” That particular section of Route 50 spans mostly desolate terrain that’s pockmarked by several large valleys and basins. Life called it lonely because there are long distances between the few small towns on the road and relatively low numbers of people travel on it. Psalm 25 talks a great deal about God’s “ways” and “paths.” Yet those who seek to travel in faith along those ways sometimes feel like they’re the loneliest highways, not just in America, but also in the whole world...

("In July, 1986 Life magazine dubbed the stretch of US Route 50 that crosses the center of Nevada The Loneliest Road in America. That particular section of Route 50 spans mostly desolate terrain that's pockmarked by several large valleys and basins. Life called it lonely because there are long distances between the few small towns on the road...")

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