Into Your Hands, I Give Everything (Psalm 31)

Training the heart is not always easy. It is bent and resists being straightened. When we bought our house here in South Carolina, we inherited a six foot hook for a hanging plant in the back yard. About a year later we had to take down a number of trees in the back and I attempted to move the hook. I couldn’t pull it out the ground. A root from the tree had grown around it and it had become a permanent feature. Or so I thought.

When the tree company felled the trees, they accidentally hit the hook and bent it. We were able to bend it back somewhat, but the evidence of its collision with a falling limb remained.

I made the best of it and have hung a number of flowers there for my wife to enjoy from the window and the bees to enjoy as they pollinate the garden. The other day, some five years after my failed attempt to move it, I noticed that it was leaning. Probing a bit, I found that I could easily remove it. The root in which it was once firmly ensconced had rotted, releasing it from its wooden shackles. Now I will look for a new place, after the counsel of my wife, to place the crook.

Sometimes, I think that is the story of our lives.

We are all crooks, bent and distorted, in need of straightening and enslaved to our sin (and behaviors, habits, addictions, prejudices and foibles). We need rescue. We need a rescuer. We need someone to place us in new surroundings so that we can bless others and fulfill our purpose.

Praise God that we do!

Our God delights to rescue the broken and battered. He specializes in turning sinners into saints. He promises to forgive and restore and to never leave us or forsake us and is even now preparing a place for us that “where He is, we may be also” (John 14:1-14). He not only rescues us, He dwells with us and will dwell with us for eternity. That’s worth singing about.

An offering for the Poetry Project

Read Psalm 31

Based on verses 1-7, and 24.

They Aren’t Just Words

They aren’t just words
these metaphors and descriptors,
chosen by Your Spirit
…… to train my soul to think and feel like David.
a King who sometimes was saintly
and sometimes like a sinner
“My Rock”,
“My Fortress”,
“My Refuge”,
“My Deliverer”,
“My Rescuer”,
“My Strength”,
“My Savior”,
……when no one else could be any of those things.

They aren’t just words.
Just as for David,
You are my rest, my hope,
and the One to whom I run.
In my weaknesses and all of my failures,
all my foibles and follies,
all my insecurities and blindness,
your strength saves me
and You have become my fortress rock.

And yet I fight against giving away my heart,
even though you ransomed me and bought me,
and redeemed me, and adopted me.
Teach me, like David, to hate vain idols.
Enrapture my heart with Your lovingkindness
that my joy would be loud.
Make my heart courageous
that all my hope in You,
would be a witness to the nations.

These aren’t just words, Lord.
I’m giving up the fight.
Bend me right.
Straighten me.
Make me useful for Your names sake.
Into Your hands I give everything.