Dissatisfaction
People submerged in a culture swarming with lies and malice feel like they are drowning in it; they can trust nothing they hear, depends on on one they meet. Such dissatisfaction with the world as it is preparation for traveling in the way of Christian discipleship.
The dissatisfaction, coupled with a longing for peace and truth, can set us on a pilgrim of wholeness in God.
A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. As long as we think that the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility, we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith. A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace.
Psalm 120 is the song of a person, song with the lies and crippled with the hate, a perosn doubled up in pain over what is going on in the world. But it is not a mere outcry, it is pain that penetrates through despair and stimulated a new beginning--a journey to God which becomes a life of peace.
"Deliver me from the liars, GOD!
They smile so sweetly but lie through their teeth."
PSALM 120:2
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