Why God Provides

Psalm 119:17

Too often we think of God’s providence as a sort of prayer-powered ATM—ask God, and if we believe in just the right way, all of our dreams will come true, and God will bless us with whatever we want. This verse seems to affirm such thinking as the Psalmist asks God to “deal bountifully” with him. Then the Psalmist will serve the Lord. Then the Psalmist will practice faith. God brings the gravy train obedience follows.

Well, look at this passage again. Is that what it really says?

The whole phrase struck me hard—

“Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live…”

That completely alters how we find ourselves woven into this text. The Psalmist is not asking to be richer than Croesus, the Psalmist is asking for enough to live. What we find here, then, is what led Christ to include a petition for daily bread in the prayer taught to the disciples. God’s providence is to give us what we need to live. That in and of itself is a powerful assertion of God’s grace—God keeps us, undergirds our lives, and ensures there will be plenty to go around. 

In the winter storm last week, the Psalmist’s thinking came more sharply into focus. When the house went dark and stayed dark, we began to wonder about the refrigerator. I even went to catalog what was in there—the vegetables would be all right, the fruit juice and the waters would be fine, the milk was going to be dependent on how long it sat, the meat was in jeopardy…I know of one acquaintance who had an old-fashioned “critter cooking” as their power stayed off for days, grilling everything in the freezer in the frigid outside (well, not much more frigid than inside, really). We gave thanks for having filled the pantry with enough non-perishables to get us through a few days. Cereal CAN be eaten without milk; canned goods are all right cold; and peanut butter is God’s gift to the cooking challenged. It was enough. In fact, it was more than enough to get us through the few days. God was good and grace abounded.

We need to carry that thinking into our everyday experience. 

God IS good and grace DOES abound—everyday for everybody.

If we rethink how we use what we have; if we rethink how we approach all that is presented to us; imagine the difference that could be made in problems such as hunger, shelter, the preservation of the Earth, and so on. God blesses us with more than we can imagine every morning as we rise—a beautiful world, the glorious sun, the freshening breeze—and a pantry able to feed us, enough so we have enough to share.

Which leads to the next major thought in this psalm.

The Psalmist knows he lives to serve. In the presence of God, that is who he is—God’s servant. That is the purpose and intent of life itself. That does not diminish our importance, value, or worth in any way, but rather enhances it. We are children of love to bring love into the world. God provides so the Psalmist can live well to serve well.

That also requires a jump-shift in conventional wisdom. Human value and worth is determined through the power and control we can exert over others and upon the world, according to conventional wisdom. To be a servant is anathema in our culture defined by SELF. To be a servant is seen as the complete thwarting of our right to self-gratification. But Christ said, and he was not kidding, “I came to serve, not to be served.” He also said that those who would lead in his kingdom would be those who served everyone else, emptying themselves for others, to the point of hefting their own cross (cf. Mt. 20:26). 

Which dovetails nicely with the Psalmist’s closing thought—

“…that I may…keep your word…”

What will bring lasting joy for the Psalmist—a fullness of life, a completeness of existence—is to be in accord with the Word of God found in God’s directives for life. Psalm 119, the longest in the collection, is an encyclopedic hymn of praise for the Torah, the law of Moses. For hundreds of verses, the Psalmist seeks to fully enter the mindset, lifestyle, and praxis of the Torah. He does so not in blind obedience that led to the deadly legalism and moralism of the Pharisees, but because life has no meaning if God is not at center. 

That is the ultimate stance of faith—we live to be with God; we orient every aspect, every nuance of our lives in the presence of God; and we seek the fullness that comes with God’s intonation of “Well done, good and faithful servant.” 

So, to find our fulfillment, we ironically begin by losing ourselves to God. We give thanks to God for providing for our needs, responding in gratitude embodied in service that proclaims the love of God for all people. In the end, we find ourselves enveloped by the Word of God, even the Word made flesh, Christ our Lord.