“What a contrast!”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, August 28, 2023
Psalm 1 (Forward, p. 30) CEV p. 556
Growing up on the dry, desolate, often windy and seldom rainy prairies of southern Alberta, I can readily identify with the images our psalmist uses today. He begins with the image of a tree planted by a water course, and indeed, in southern Alberta that is virtually the only place you will find them growing on their own—that is, unless someone has arduously planted, and watered them, somewhere else. Thus, you find massive cottonwood trees adorning the river flats, trees that not only get the benefit of fertile soils occasionally deposited from local flooding but are also maintained by the nearby waters. Similarly, there is the tree we know as ‘Suffield National Forest’ out on the lone prairies near the small community of that name. It manages to eek out an existence only because the unused irrigation ditch in which it is situated managed to collect and hold water.
Our psalm uses this very image to describe a certain class of people, people who refuse evil advice, who don’t follow sinful people in their lifestyles and who don’t join in with them in sneering or despising God. Instead, they treasure God’s Law and make it the constant topic of their thoughts and meditations. Like those trees growing by the waterside, they will prosper and all that they do will flourish.
However, on the other hand, our psalmist choses yet another image of which I am very familiar: it has to with the destructive power of the wind. He compares evil people with windblown straw, which is swiftly blown away, but I know this wind in its more destructive capabilities, able to blow down buildings, overturn semis, blacken the sky and lay fields a-waste because of the drifting topsoil. Yes, this may seem extreme, and it is, but it is likewise extreme for those who chose to do evil. Their ways are like a road that leads to ruin. They won’t have an excuse in the day of judgment and will be denied a place with the people of God.
Now, it is rather fitting that this meditation should begin the entire book of Psalms, for really it sets the tone and the theme of all the rest. It. tells the reader, which includes us, that we are faced with choices, choices of whether to follow God’s way or not, and it depicts, rather graphically, the consequences of those choices. Obviously then, this message is a good place to start, whether for them back then, or for us. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on his law day and night” (verse 2).
Commemoration: Augustine of Hippo
“Born in North Africa in the far reaches of the Roman Empire with a Christian mother and a ‘non-observant’ father, Augustine, whom we remember today, was a star from the beginning. Smart, imaginative, and ambitious, he offered himself around the empire, trying out religions, until one day, having been mesmerized by the preaching of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Augustine heard God’s voice and was transformed.
“At the Great Vigil of Easter in 386, Augustine was baptized. He eventually returned to Africa, where he spent the rest of his life serving as bishop as well as thinking, praying, writing, preaching, exhorting, pummeling, and hoping. We still honour Augustine, we still read his writings, and he still speaks to us because he figured out that our problem is not enough love. Our problem is that we love everything else more than God. But Augustine reminds us that God will keep coming after us until we do love God most of all.”
Moving Forward: “Can we imagine what it would be like to meditate on God’s law day and night?”