After the Hebrew final, and now seven months of daily writing out the last two verses of Psalm 27, I decided to look up the rest of the verse.
The first verse is, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; who shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
To an English reader these verses sound hopelessly redundant. But fortunately I had been studying Hebrew syntax and instantly could see synonymous parallelism. Hebrew has a less highly developed system of adjectives than English so for emphasis it often relies on repetition. So, here the verse says the exact same thing twice with slightly different wording. The point is emphasis.
The phrase “the Lord is my light,” reminded me of a story my mentor told me in the first months following my conversion. To appreciate this story it will be helpful to know that I’m a planner. As I write this I’m staring at what I call, “the war wall” in my bedroom. I’ve got sheets of paper taped to my wall with plans—classes laid out for the next two years, a publishing to do list for War For My Soul, the titles of other Christian books I might want to write (5 more in the War For My Soul series and 4 small group companion books), and blog post ideas for months if not years.
My mentor rightfully saw this as a problematic tendency. So, he would continuously tell me this: “Imagine walking up a mountain in a starless, moonless night. All you have is a little candle that illuminates enough so you can see your next step or two. And of course you know you are going towards the top. You’ll get there—but you have to have enough faith to take one step at a time. Being a Christian is often the same way. God gives us enough light to see the next step or two and we have to trust that he’s taking us towards the top.”
I realized everything for the last year had been working against trusting God one step at a time. My Christian friends were either all married or getting married, my younger brother was living on his own and about to start making real money, and some of the people I had started seminary with were graduating and getting jobs.
I wanted to toss the candle away and start sprinting up the hill on my own. I wanted to catch up.
Then, I started remembering more of the story. Although round about, and often totally insane (these stories fill the War For My Soul series), God had led me a long ways up the mountain in six short years. Further, I was taking the steps I knew he wanted me to.
I had a strong sense God was telling me, “Patiently follow my path for another year and I’ll show you things you can’t imagine.”
I was working nights at the time and was keenly aware of how important light was for getting anywhere or doing anything. So, I excitedly agreed.
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