Episode Transcript
Welcome Bonnie McClure to the Wake-Up Call for a mini-series on Psalm 103. Bonnie is from Bremen, Georgia. She is married to Matthew, and mother of two sons ten and eight, and a dog named Kudzu and a cat named Rose. She’s a high school bookkeeper by day and a writer by calling. She writes regularly at the Pointed Arrow.
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Abba, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Abba, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Psalm 103 (NLT)
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
may I never forget the good things he does for me.
He forgives all my sins
and heals all my diseases.
He redeems me from death
and crowns me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things.
My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
The LORD gives righteousness
and justice to all who are treated unfairly.
He revealed his character to Moses
and his deeds to the people of Israel.
The LORD is compassionate and merciful,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
He will not constantly accuse us,
nor remain angry forever.
He does not punish us for all our sins;
he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our sins as far from us
as the east is from the west.
The LORD is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust.
Our days on earth are like grass;
like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
The wind blows, and we are gone—
as though we had never been here.
But the love of the LORD remains forever
with those who fear him.
His salvation extends to the children’s children
of those who are faithful to his covenant,
of those who obey his commandments!
The LORD has made the heavens his throne;
from there he rules over everything.
Praise the LORD, you angels,
you mighty ones who carry out his plans,
listening for each of his commands.
Yes, praise the LORD, you armies of angels
who serve him and do his will!
Praise the LORD, everything he has created,
everything in all his kingdom.
Let all that I am praise the LORD.
CONSIDER THIS
There is a concept in psychology called, “The Tyranny of the Shoulds.” It represents the collective inner voices that consciously and unconsciously chide and guide us into alignment with our social principles. They are comprised of all the “shoulds” to which we learn to hold ourselves accountable.
This sounds like a helpful mechanism except for the word “tyranny.” This word is deliberately used because our inner sense of what we “should” be doing can be awfully prone to going awry and crossing over into self-condemnation, trapping us in spirals of shame when we fail to live up to our own impossible standards.
I think of this collective concept whenever I read the story of the men who bring forth the adulterous woman for stoning before Jesus in John 8. Their convictions are not wrong. Adultery is a sin. But their focus becomes tyrannical. I imagine them there, arms crossed, leaning forward in expectation, confident in their accusation, awaiting certain condemnation from Jesus, demanding, in fact, that he act in accordance with the justice of death they believe she deserves.
Psalm 103:11 speaks of the faithfulness of the Lord, “For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth” (NLT). This is faithfulness as full as a measurement we cannot even fathom. The way Jesus responds to the woman’s accusers in this passage is a beautiful example of his faithfulness to any recurrent sin, problem, or temptation that we face.
He draws in the dust.
He is unrattled, unphased, undeterred, as we often witness him in many other stories throughout the Bible. When others are moved by panic or crisis, offense or injustice, Jesus is calm and secure in the faithfulness of God to fulfill his plan and promises. I do not know what markings Jesus made in the dust, but it is written as if he were simply passing the time.
It is a beautiful image of faithful love by presence. Jesus stands between one sinner and another and mediates simply by remaining undisturbed. As the tyranny begins to push back on his lack of reaction, he stands with a pointed answer that silences them.
“All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” (John 8:7 NLT) Knowing he alone is the only sinless one, he doesn’t wait for them to process this retort. He stoops down and returns to drawing in the dust.
By the faithful presence of Jesus, the accusers begin to leave one by one.
And this is what his unfailing love does for us: it stands between us and any accuser that we face, whether internal or external.
It is what he did for us on the cross, outstretching his arms in faithful obedience to fulfill the mediation and reconciliation we ourselves could never accomplish. If left up to us, we would rather spend our time calling for the stoning of one another.
In his faithfulness, he shows us another way—the Way, in fact. Calm, steadfast, presence of love, not condemnation, will protect us from cycles of shame spiraling, the tyranny of shoulds within and without, and as they are dismissed by his presence one by one, we become free to live in his light of liberation.
THE PRAYER
Lord Jesus, thank you for your presence. Your steadfast love remains unparalleled to any conflict or condemnation that we face. We thank you for how you love both the victim and the accuser with unwavering faithfulness. We thank you that your plans supersede all the ways that we fail one another. We thank you that your love will not leave us in our sin, but transforms us at a core level. You liberate us from empty cycles and narrow-minded traps. You are the true and only way to abundant life. Amen.
