November 8
________________________________________
PSALM 73 HUMAN KNOWLEDGE VERSUS DISCERNMENT
13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.
14 For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.
15 If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children.
16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task,
17 until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.
18 Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.
19 How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!
20 Like a dream when one awakes,
O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.
21 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart,
22 I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. – Psalm 73:13-22
________________________________________
A poem inspired by this psalm by ILMA
Do you try to figure things out by yourself?
Do you think that if you worked hard, you can be cleansed?
You can do daily task of purifying yourself, but it is all in vain
The cleansing of your soul is the work that only God can do.
Why do you keep on understanding what only God can?
Why do you keep on thinking hard what you can’t understand?
Have you not discovered that the more you analyze, the more you are paralyzed?
Wouldn’t discernment be better than your quest for knowledge?
Human understanding is limited but God’s revelation is boundless
What good is it to keep on understanding and finding answers?
Doesn’t this futile activity just hinder us from hearing God’s Spirit?
Why keep on wanting to know what God has kept secret?
Go to the throne of the Lord and he will give you discernment
Fear the Lord and you will begin to be wise and be enlightened
Rely on your own understanding and you enter the door to disaster
Ask the Lord for discernment and you will see his view and prosper.
________________________________________
REFLECTION
• Why do you think it is very easy to overthink and rely on our own understanding things in this world? How can we avoid this work of the flesh?