Making Life Work

Psalm 115:4 – 8 has been one of those passages to which I have returned time and again.  It serves as a reminder of the futility of following after gods that we invent.

Reading through it again today I was struck by another aspect of the Psalmist’s warning.  All of us have been shaped to some extent by our experiences.  Shaped in the sense that when we have experienced pain we tend to want to avoid encountering pain again.  So, if you are like me and most folks, you take stock of what caused the pain, and if it was something that you did, you make a covenant with yourself that you will never do that again.  When it comes to things like putting your hand on a hot burner, that makes a lot of sense.  However, when it comes to relating to people and relating to the world around us, those covenants can become damaging.

Larry Crabb calls those covenants strategies to make life work.  On the surface they may be good behaviors.  Things like serving others, or being a solid dependable person.  Some are not healthy like never taking risks, or refusing to confront people to avoid conflict.  These are a problem because we trust in our strategies to make life work rather than trusting in God who created us to thrive and have impact.

As it says in Psalm 115:8, we become our strategies.  We trust our strategies rather than trust the sovereign One who created us.  Read Psalm 115 and notice the contrast between making idols or strategies and trust.