Psalm 77 reads as follows from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible:
[1] I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, that he may hear me.
[2] In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
[3] I think of God, and I moan;
I meditate, and my spirit faints. [Selah]
[4] Thou dost hold my eyelids from closing;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
[5] I consider the days of old,
I remember the years long ago.
[6] I commune with my heart in the night;
I meditate and search my spirit:
[7] "Will the Lord spurn for ever,
and never again be favorable?
[8] Has his steadfast love for ever ceased?
Are his promises at an end for all time?
[9] Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?" [Selah]
[10] And I say, "It is my grief
that the right hand of the Most High has changed."
[11] I will call to mind the deeds of the LORD;
yea, I will remember thy wonders of old.
[12] I will meditate on all thy work,
and muse on thy mighty deeds.
[13] Thy way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
[14] Thou art the God who workest wonders,
who hast manifested thy might among the peoples.
[15] Thou didst with thy arm redeem thy people,
the sons of Jacob and Joseph. [Selah]
[16] When the waters saw thee, O God,
when the waters saw thee, they were afraid,
yea, the deep trembled.
[17] The clouds poured out water;
the skies gave forth thunder;
thy arrows flashed on every side.
[18] The crash of thy thunder was in the whirlwind;
thy lightning's lighted up the world;
the earth trembled and shook.
[19] Thy way was through the sea,
thy path through the great waters;
yet thy footprints were unseen.
[20] Thou didst lead thy people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
The psalmist at first is in deep distress or some sort of panic zone, whether it is sudden occurrence or now rather enduring, he is calling loudly out to the Lord for help, but he is not getting the type of the response that he had been used to..
His voice had been prominent in the spiritual realms but he has been reliant on just being able to call forth and that alone gets him the answer.
The Lord in the past has revealed himself in more visible, demonstrative and powerful ways and apparently that is not happening for him now, and now the Lord is seemingly absent and this seeming absence or change of policy is compounding his distress as not only is he not getting the answers he is used to, the policy itself towards him seems to have changed..
He wonders aloud if the Lord has changed course and he is still recognizes his own voice in prayer in the same way.
His calls and his voice in prayer had been responded to in certain ways in the past and that is not what is currently happening and apparently the Lord's ways for him have become more so out of view.
Even if the psalmist wasn't in distress, he still wants the backdrop of the relationship with the Lord to be where it had been where he could call upon him as needed and get frank, visible and tangible answers along the lines of help if necessary and now it seems the Lord having done that in the past for him, is not longer responding in that fashion.
And now, not having the Lord's hand seemingly with him in the same way and in the same fashion as in prior times, is compounding the actual duress and distress that he is in, as he has relied on the Lord's helping hand in the past, and now he is seemingly without it.
There seems to be a falloff, a change, a new unfamiliar tone to the relationship itself that is adding to and greatly increasing the distress that the psalmist is currently in.
It is one thing to have the trouble, and that is one contending force but it is another thing to also lack the help prior that had always been there and was a familiar force in the psalmist life.
Even if there is no trouble in the moment, the threat of trouble is always there, and there is the hope that reliable divine help will be available if need be.
There is always the need for divine intelligence, as our own natural abilities only take us so far, and we are simply not in the know as to what all the contending variables are going to be.
I might not need the help of an angel while walking down the street, or maybe I do.
One doesn't quite know what the variables are even in one given scene or one given scenario out there, as the focus can't go everywhere. There might be hundreds of things happening right nearby, I can't key in everywhere in my immediate environment at the same time. I can't read page 2 and page 26 of the newspaper simultaneously. Ultimately, I am relaying on the intelligence of the helpers, the angels.
Galatians 6.7 says, "
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also, reap.
The psalmist somewhat lost his way because while he properly had sown in prayer, he also needed to sow in meditation as well.
If he wasn't going to ponder upon the Lord and his ways, the Lord was going to withhold to a degree on some revelations that he otherwise had for him.
We can only process so much information at a time and present day society obviously does contain information overload and then there is a matter of picking and
Choosing what information to focus on and delve into and that is in part guess work as well.
This is where divine agents, such as the angels, are needed always, because they can see those things that we might miss, that might even be just about in front of us, and the help of angels is part of the divine intelligence for us. And what is going to happen right around the next corner, is something that we don't have control over in the prior moments of time and we need help even as we turn the next corner.
Ultimately though, this psalm becomes in part mystical and within the partaking of mystery, as the psalmist now shifts to meditation and musing, realizing that maybe he has made a mistake in keeping the emphasis almost totally on his voice in calling upon the Lord in prayer and petition, while not also emphasizing and reemphasizing meditation before the Lord.
In the matter of reaping and sowing, he had to a great degree left out meditation even though he knows about it and while he was and is right on target in sowing through the means of prayer, he also needs to sow through the means of meditation as well.
The lack of meditation and pondering, left too much of a gap, maybe it was a smaller gap at first but the gap became wider and thus his distress.
This psalmist shifts his strategies to now include meditation, with musings including pondering upon the past ways in which the Lord has been present for others and the ways in which he revealed himself to others.
The origin of the Lord's ways, the approach of the Lord, can be vastly unknown and unrecognizable.
Yet, there is a tool, besides always important avenue of speaking to the Lord in prayer, to where the Lord will reveal of his choosing some of the behind the scenes actions that have been there and will be coming around the next bend, and experience shows that a lot of what happens to us comes from behind the scenes before it suddenly manifests into our presence.
It is somewhat counterintuitive if things are going array, to stop, go someplace like an empty church and sit and ponder in the silence and use that as the key point of contention.
Usually the first reaction to trouble is to strive even more, or in the case of prayer, pray even harder, after all the squeaky wheel gets the oil
If I am really in trouble and the gears of trouble are churning and heating up, the slowdown aspects of meditation just doesn't seem like it equates with the necessary action on my part, in the natural sense of things, and it isn't the first option usually presented by societal forces and within the art of contemporary thinking.
Also, meditation can be like the wash through that you need, psalm 51 speaks of turning things for you as while as snow and how can some of these messes we find ourselves in ever coming out looking great unless something like this actually turns the tables to where the result is pristine?
A stint swimming in the rough seas, can feel like putting yourself in a washing machine and meditation can take you through in ways that just can't be achieved otherwise as the waves of meditation wash through.
The psalmists musings bring him all the way back to the Red Sea crossing, a specific time and place where the seas where opened, yet by whom and how?
Skeptics even today might say that the earth was flooded in the times of Noah and indeed the Red Seas did open suddenly, but neither event was divinely ordered.
It could have been that the great flood and the opening of the Red Sea was coincidently timed with some random unexplainable event of nature and what happened in the great flood did happen but wasn't aimed at any given group of people for any purpose or divine design.
We might say this about what happens to us at times and question was this happenstance or out of a design that was from the Lord's hand of grace for us?
Indeed the revelations presenting in this psalm is that the parting of the Red Seas was the Lord's doing, but how this actually happened is untraceable and there where no footprints or signature on this according to the psalmist, but subsequent the musings and meditation reveal that is was by the actions of the Lord.
This in itself is revealing about what meditation was doing for the psalmist. He was able to take prior happenings and find a confirmation of what had happened as being from the Lord.
A very useful tool for anyone really, in the here and now, is confirmations as to how, where and in given ways the Lord is operating on our behalf and has operated on our behalf.
And while the Lord does operate up front and center, and had been operating this way for the psalmist previously, he is now showing his hand in more of a behind the scenes fashion, and the additional tool needed to hone in on this and further understand what is happening behind the scenes is the tool of meditation and musing upon the ways of the Lord.
There are moments for crying out to the Lord, if a comet is dropping from the sky; in that spit second there really isn't that much time to muse upon what is happening.
It might have been similar to that for those who had been chased to the edges of the Red Sea, there wasn't much time to meditate and ponder on about what was happening, as what needed to happen needed to happen fast and in the nick of time
But many of our paths can be elongated and along those long and windy roads, where what the Lord has to say, what the Lord is doing and wants for us, needs to be searched for not only in prayer but also in mediation and musing upon his ways and what has been drawn out too much can be reinvigorated with a fresh message and revealing from the Lord as to what he is highlighting for us right now
To not incorporate this aspect is to really to believe that the Lord is only going to come and reveal up front and center and according to this psalm, there is more to do, to find out what might be going on, as the plain reality is, that so much is actually coming at us from behind the scenes.
The Lord had and still does operate in ways that cannot be simply grasped upon without listening through the means of prayer and meditation.
The meditation is inclusive of remembrance and ponderance of the ways of the Lord then and now and possibly into the future.
With this, at all points, meditation is valid.
The palmist has reached another level of understanding and now realizes this missing reality as the Lord is beginning to unfold new revelations to him while he is meditating and showing him things that otherwise had been behind the scenes, active yes, but partially to fully veiled and otherwise hidden from view.
He had been missing out, missing messages and directives and understandings, not because he stopped praying, but because he did not also include meditation and musing upon the Lord and his ways.
What precisely he had been missing, we don't know, but we do know that he felt strongly t that he was missing out, and that he needed a lot more.
And that is the way things are, in that someone knows they are missing out, although what has been missed is not precisely known.
This meditation process doesn't preempt prayer but it does say that prayer is more than just talking; it involves active listening, active meditation and pondering in the presence of the Lord who reveals some of his ways in this closeness and the invitation to this meditation is an invitation to the closeness found within the meditation.
What the Lord reveals, how the Lord reveals, is up to him, but the process of finding this out is blue printed here in this psalm
It can't be said that everything that happens behind the scenes is from the Lord and occurring for you and for good, there are forces of darkness and it could even be said that the Red Sea Crossing could have been made through other forces, as according to this psalm, it was not at first traceable to the Lord but was found out to be from the Lord through a revealing.
Obviously, at the moment of the Red Sea crossing, there was no other good alternative present as to what to do at that point, but it might be that something that is presenting as the only good alternative in fact is not from the Lord and not the path to take and this is why even what seems to be the only good alternative has to also given time be mused up by and within the presence of the Lord, to find confirmation.
This is why it is paramount to maintain that prayer relationship and cultivate the meditation before the Lord while converting your present realities into some usable understanding about what is happening out there as all that is out there is not fully earmarked as to what it is, where it is coming from and there needs to be keen attention to discerning the voice of the Lord, to the ways of the Lord, which can be coming from behind the scenes and seemingly from out of nowhere.
But everything that is coming from behind the scenes is not necessarily from the Lord to you, so you need to maintain, strengthen and hold onto the place of prayer and meditation first and foremost for yourself so that you can know the Lord and his ways for you and potentially bypass some roads that seem like they are viable, yet may be revealed as not being for you..
And this is all part of the sowing and reaping. A farmer is not going to reap a given crop unless he sows it. There is plenteous ground for sowing in the realms of prayer, so no matter how well things are humming along, there is plenty of need for intercessory prayer for others who are in myriads of troubles and distresses and that is always a good place to sow.
By not meditating and pondering at the first watch, in the lamenting portion of this psalm, the psalmist had neglected that second field on which he needed to sow. He was sowing in prayer but not meditation and hence the shortfall.
When Dorothy and friends finally got to see the Wizard of Oz, he was operating behind the scenes and he turned out to have some power and persuasion but not in the ways expected.
The Lord will have all the power and persuasion but he will also arrive in ways not expected, and even if he arrives in ways expected, that the arrival will come from behind the scenes, brings forth that sowing in meditation is a important field to cultivate in understanding this unexpected and grasping upon previously concealed wonders.
The mistake the psalmist made at first was that he didn't include enough meditation as prayer alone had been doing it for him, and he was missing some of what the Lord was revealing to him and how he worked for him, which at times, was untraceable and indeterminate but still there, as revealed when he went a bit further down the road of meditation. At first missing out on a revelation here and there might not have affected him much and this shortfall might have been obscured by the many ready answers to his prayers, but then it all began to accumulate into a realization that he was missing out.
He had prayed and prayed aloud quite effectively, but relied to much on this part of the equation always being present in the same way, where the invitation of the Lord was to muse upon, ponder upon and meditate upon his ways and in that part of the relationship the Lord had much more to reveal that had been there but behind the scenes of his understanding and what he could grasp upon immediately.
For him, and for us, it is not always going to be enough to just pray, as this is just the way it us, that pondering needs to be entered into, as too much of what happens is not plain enough and intuitive enough, and to rely only on other good traits, in trying to ascertain what is going on and what is from the Lord, is just not enough.
We know we can't see into the next hour totally, and when we travel about we know we don't know in advance what sort of scenes we are going to bump into. That alone is enough to say, truly, a lot is coming at us from behind the scenes and we have to get into the world of what is happening behind the scenes and prayer is part of this, but also the shift to and the maintenance of meditation has to be part of this if we are going to more effectively navigate with the help of the Lord and his angels all that is out there.
Susan Boyle's video and song, Perfect Day ends with the chorus and refrain," your goanna reap what you sow."
Shifting the emphasis towards also meditating before the Lord will reap benefits heretofore unseen and unknown, within newly and freshly revealed.
[1] I cry aloud to God,
aloud to God, that he may hear me.
[2] In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;
in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;
my soul refuses to be comforted.
[3] I think of God, and I moan;
I meditate, and my spirit faints. [Selah]
[4] Thou dost hold my eyelids from closing;
I am so troubled that I cannot speak.
[5] I consider the days of old,
I remember the years long ago.
[6] I commune with my heart in the night;
I meditate and search my spirit:
[7] "Will the Lord spurn for ever,
and never again be favorable?
[8] Has his steadfast love for ever ceased?
Are his promises at an end for all time?
[9] Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger shut up his compassion?" [Selah]
[10] And I say, "It is my grief
that the right hand of the Most High has changed."
[11] I will call to mind the deeds of the LORD;
yea, I will remember thy wonders of old.
[12] I will meditate on all thy work,
and muse on thy mighty deeds.
[13] Thy way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
[14] Thou art the God who workest wonders,
who hast manifested thy might among the peoples.
[15] Thou didst with thy arm redeem thy people,
the sons of Jacob and Joseph. [Selah]
[16] When the waters saw thee, O God,
when the waters saw thee, they were afraid,
yea, the deep trembled.
[17] The clouds poured out water;
the skies gave forth thunder;
thy arrows flashed on every side.
[18] The crash of thy thunder was in the whirlwind;
thy lightning's lighted up the world;
the earth trembled and shook.
[19] Thy way was through the sea,
thy path through the great waters;
yet thy footprints were unseen.
[20] Thou didst lead thy people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
The psalmist at first is in deep distress or some sort of panic zone, whether it is sudden occurrence or now rather enduring, he is calling loudly out to the Lord for help, but he is not getting the type of the response that he had been used to..
His voice had been prominent in the spiritual realms but he has been reliant on just being able to call forth and that alone gets him the answer.
The Lord in the past has revealed himself in more visible, demonstrative and powerful ways and apparently that is not happening for him now, and now the Lord is seemingly absent and this seeming absence or change of policy is compounding his distress as not only is he not getting the answers he is used to, the policy itself towards him seems to have changed..
He wonders aloud if the Lord has changed course and he is still recognizes his own voice in prayer in the same way.
His calls and his voice in prayer had been responded to in certain ways in the past and that is not what is currently happening and apparently the Lord's ways for him have become more so out of view.
Even if the psalmist wasn't in distress, he still wants the backdrop of the relationship with the Lord to be where it had been where he could call upon him as needed and get frank, visible and tangible answers along the lines of help if necessary and now it seems the Lord having done that in the past for him, is not longer responding in that fashion.
And now, not having the Lord's hand seemingly with him in the same way and in the same fashion as in prior times, is compounding the actual duress and distress that he is in, as he has relied on the Lord's helping hand in the past, and now he is seemingly without it.
There seems to be a falloff, a change, a new unfamiliar tone to the relationship itself that is adding to and greatly increasing the distress that the psalmist is currently in.
It is one thing to have the trouble, and that is one contending force but it is another thing to also lack the help prior that had always been there and was a familiar force in the psalmist life.
Even if there is no trouble in the moment, the threat of trouble is always there, and there is the hope that reliable divine help will be available if need be.
There is always the need for divine intelligence, as our own natural abilities only take us so far, and we are simply not in the know as to what all the contending variables are going to be.
I might not need the help of an angel while walking down the street, or maybe I do.
One doesn't quite know what the variables are even in one given scene or one given scenario out there, as the focus can't go everywhere. There might be hundreds of things happening right nearby, I can't key in everywhere in my immediate environment at the same time. I can't read page 2 and page 26 of the newspaper simultaneously. Ultimately, I am relaying on the intelligence of the helpers, the angels.
Galatians 6.7 says, "
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also, reap.
The psalmist somewhat lost his way because while he properly had sown in prayer, he also needed to sow in meditation as well.
If he wasn't going to ponder upon the Lord and his ways, the Lord was going to withhold to a degree on some revelations that he otherwise had for him.
We can only process so much information at a time and present day society obviously does contain information overload and then there is a matter of picking and
Choosing what information to focus on and delve into and that is in part guess work as well.
This is where divine agents, such as the angels, are needed always, because they can see those things that we might miss, that might even be just about in front of us, and the help of angels is part of the divine intelligence for us. And what is going to happen right around the next corner, is something that we don't have control over in the prior moments of time and we need help even as we turn the next corner.
Ultimately though, this psalm becomes in part mystical and within the partaking of mystery, as the psalmist now shifts to meditation and musing, realizing that maybe he has made a mistake in keeping the emphasis almost totally on his voice in calling upon the Lord in prayer and petition, while not also emphasizing and reemphasizing meditation before the Lord.
In the matter of reaping and sowing, he had to a great degree left out meditation even though he knows about it and while he was and is right on target in sowing through the means of prayer, he also needs to sow through the means of meditation as well.
The lack of meditation and pondering, left too much of a gap, maybe it was a smaller gap at first but the gap became wider and thus his distress.
This psalmist shifts his strategies to now include meditation, with musings including pondering upon the past ways in which the Lord has been present for others and the ways in which he revealed himself to others.
The origin of the Lord's ways, the approach of the Lord, can be vastly unknown and unrecognizable.
Yet, there is a tool, besides always important avenue of speaking to the Lord in prayer, to where the Lord will reveal of his choosing some of the behind the scenes actions that have been there and will be coming around the next bend, and experience shows that a lot of what happens to us comes from behind the scenes before it suddenly manifests into our presence.
It is somewhat counterintuitive if things are going array, to stop, go someplace like an empty church and sit and ponder in the silence and use that as the key point of contention.
Usually the first reaction to trouble is to strive even more, or in the case of prayer, pray even harder, after all the squeaky wheel gets the oil
If I am really in trouble and the gears of trouble are churning and heating up, the slowdown aspects of meditation just doesn't seem like it equates with the necessary action on my part, in the natural sense of things, and it isn't the first option usually presented by societal forces and within the art of contemporary thinking.
Also, meditation can be like the wash through that you need, psalm 51 speaks of turning things for you as while as snow and how can some of these messes we find ourselves in ever coming out looking great unless something like this actually turns the tables to where the result is pristine?
A stint swimming in the rough seas, can feel like putting yourself in a washing machine and meditation can take you through in ways that just can't be achieved otherwise as the waves of meditation wash through.
The psalmists musings bring him all the way back to the Red Sea crossing, a specific time and place where the seas where opened, yet by whom and how?
Skeptics even today might say that the earth was flooded in the times of Noah and indeed the Red Seas did open suddenly, but neither event was divinely ordered.
It could have been that the great flood and the opening of the Red Sea was coincidently timed with some random unexplainable event of nature and what happened in the great flood did happen but wasn't aimed at any given group of people for any purpose or divine design.
We might say this about what happens to us at times and question was this happenstance or out of a design that was from the Lord's hand of grace for us?
Indeed the revelations presenting in this psalm is that the parting of the Red Seas was the Lord's doing, but how this actually happened is untraceable and there where no footprints or signature on this according to the psalmist, but subsequent the musings and meditation reveal that is was by the actions of the Lord.
This in itself is revealing about what meditation was doing for the psalmist. He was able to take prior happenings and find a confirmation of what had happened as being from the Lord.
A very useful tool for anyone really, in the here and now, is confirmations as to how, where and in given ways the Lord is operating on our behalf and has operated on our behalf.
And while the Lord does operate up front and center, and had been operating this way for the psalmist previously, he is now showing his hand in more of a behind the scenes fashion, and the additional tool needed to hone in on this and further understand what is happening behind the scenes is the tool of meditation and musing upon the ways of the Lord.
There are moments for crying out to the Lord, if a comet is dropping from the sky; in that spit second there really isn't that much time to muse upon what is happening.
It might have been similar to that for those who had been chased to the edges of the Red Sea, there wasn't much time to meditate and ponder on about what was happening, as what needed to happen needed to happen fast and in the nick of time
But many of our paths can be elongated and along those long and windy roads, where what the Lord has to say, what the Lord is doing and wants for us, needs to be searched for not only in prayer but also in mediation and musing upon his ways and what has been drawn out too much can be reinvigorated with a fresh message and revealing from the Lord as to what he is highlighting for us right now
To not incorporate this aspect is to really to believe that the Lord is only going to come and reveal up front and center and according to this psalm, there is more to do, to find out what might be going on, as the plain reality is, that so much is actually coming at us from behind the scenes.
The Lord had and still does operate in ways that cannot be simply grasped upon without listening through the means of prayer and meditation.
The meditation is inclusive of remembrance and ponderance of the ways of the Lord then and now and possibly into the future.
With this, at all points, meditation is valid.
The palmist has reached another level of understanding and now realizes this missing reality as the Lord is beginning to unfold new revelations to him while he is meditating and showing him things that otherwise had been behind the scenes, active yes, but partially to fully veiled and otherwise hidden from view.
He had been missing out, missing messages and directives and understandings, not because he stopped praying, but because he did not also include meditation and musing upon the Lord and his ways.
What precisely he had been missing, we don't know, but we do know that he felt strongly t that he was missing out, and that he needed a lot more.
And that is the way things are, in that someone knows they are missing out, although what has been missed is not precisely known.
This meditation process doesn't preempt prayer but it does say that prayer is more than just talking; it involves active listening, active meditation and pondering in the presence of the Lord who reveals some of his ways in this closeness and the invitation to this meditation is an invitation to the closeness found within the meditation.
What the Lord reveals, how the Lord reveals, is up to him, but the process of finding this out is blue printed here in this psalm
It can't be said that everything that happens behind the scenes is from the Lord and occurring for you and for good, there are forces of darkness and it could even be said that the Red Sea Crossing could have been made through other forces, as according to this psalm, it was not at first traceable to the Lord but was found out to be from the Lord through a revealing.
Obviously, at the moment of the Red Sea crossing, there was no other good alternative present as to what to do at that point, but it might be that something that is presenting as the only good alternative in fact is not from the Lord and not the path to take and this is why even what seems to be the only good alternative has to also given time be mused up by and within the presence of the Lord, to find confirmation.
This is why it is paramount to maintain that prayer relationship and cultivate the meditation before the Lord while converting your present realities into some usable understanding about what is happening out there as all that is out there is not fully earmarked as to what it is, where it is coming from and there needs to be keen attention to discerning the voice of the Lord, to the ways of the Lord, which can be coming from behind the scenes and seemingly from out of nowhere.
But everything that is coming from behind the scenes is not necessarily from the Lord to you, so you need to maintain, strengthen and hold onto the place of prayer and meditation first and foremost for yourself so that you can know the Lord and his ways for you and potentially bypass some roads that seem like they are viable, yet may be revealed as not being for you..
And this is all part of the sowing and reaping. A farmer is not going to reap a given crop unless he sows it. There is plenteous ground for sowing in the realms of prayer, so no matter how well things are humming along, there is plenty of need for intercessory prayer for others who are in myriads of troubles and distresses and that is always a good place to sow.
By not meditating and pondering at the first watch, in the lamenting portion of this psalm, the psalmist had neglected that second field on which he needed to sow. He was sowing in prayer but not meditation and hence the shortfall.
When Dorothy and friends finally got to see the Wizard of Oz, he was operating behind the scenes and he turned out to have some power and persuasion but not in the ways expected.
The Lord will have all the power and persuasion but he will also arrive in ways not expected, and even if he arrives in ways expected, that the arrival will come from behind the scenes, brings forth that sowing in meditation is a important field to cultivate in understanding this unexpected and grasping upon previously concealed wonders.
The mistake the psalmist made at first was that he didn't include enough meditation as prayer alone had been doing it for him, and he was missing some of what the Lord was revealing to him and how he worked for him, which at times, was untraceable and indeterminate but still there, as revealed when he went a bit further down the road of meditation. At first missing out on a revelation here and there might not have affected him much and this shortfall might have been obscured by the many ready answers to his prayers, but then it all began to accumulate into a realization that he was missing out.
He had prayed and prayed aloud quite effectively, but relied to much on this part of the equation always being present in the same way, where the invitation of the Lord was to muse upon, ponder upon and meditate upon his ways and in that part of the relationship the Lord had much more to reveal that had been there but behind the scenes of his understanding and what he could grasp upon immediately.
For him, and for us, it is not always going to be enough to just pray, as this is just the way it us, that pondering needs to be entered into, as too much of what happens is not plain enough and intuitive enough, and to rely only on other good traits, in trying to ascertain what is going on and what is from the Lord, is just not enough.
We know we can't see into the next hour totally, and when we travel about we know we don't know in advance what sort of scenes we are going to bump into. That alone is enough to say, truly, a lot is coming at us from behind the scenes and we have to get into the world of what is happening behind the scenes and prayer is part of this, but also the shift to and the maintenance of meditation has to be part of this if we are going to more effectively navigate with the help of the Lord and his angels all that is out there.
Susan Boyle's video and song, Perfect Day ends with the chorus and refrain," your goanna reap what you sow."
Shifting the emphasis towards also meditating before the Lord will reap benefits heretofore unseen and unknown, within newly and freshly revealed.
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