Read Psalm 36.
It’s easy to live with cancer. Or, at least it’s easy to live with cancer if you’re unaware; up until that point where it begins taking your life.
In my teens and twenties I thought that I knew a lot about life, mostly through the eyes and writings of others. The words of these prophets became my truth. I was an atheist. There was no fear of God in any of it, nor was there any shame of sin. In fact, my crew and myself reveled in sin and disdain for God. It was as if we looked through the eye of a needle and boldly exclaimed that we saw all that is.
Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart;
there is no fear of God before his eyes.
For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
Have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz? Do you remember the moment when Dorothy (and Toto) are transported from life in drab gray scale to a world of vivid Technicolor?
In Psalm 36 David paints a Technicolor picture of the richness of God’s glory. In the moment when his life was sought by the wicked he did not look inward, but upward. He saw the all-encompassing, joy-renewing character of the living God. The God whose steadfast love extends to the heavens, who gives refuge in the shadow of His wings, and invites us to feast from the abundance of His house. David saw past the eye of the needle.
In my arrogance I thought that I knew what was true, yet I lived in a small story with myself at the center. It’s only in the light of the Lord Jesus that we see truth. He is the Truth, and He invites us to drink richly from the fountain of life, particularly when the hand of the wicked comes to drive us away. Every day the war over truth runs through each and every one of us. Sometimes it takes shape in the lies we tell ourselves during temptation to sin. Other times it comes from people who do not reject evil and want us to suppress the truth along with them. Rather than looking inward we look upward, and drink from the fountain of life in the presence of the Lord who is The Truth. We rest in the knowledge that Jesus has overcome the world (Jn 16:33).
“…let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” – Hebrews 12:1
-- Chris Weiland