Wondrous Things

Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live and keep your word. Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not your commandments from me! (Psalm 119:17-19 ESV).

Isn’t it curious that the psalmist asks God to “open his eyes” so he could actually see the wondrous things of God? It would seem that they would be so apparent that no one could miss them. Just open the Bible and read from any passage and you certainly will see these wondrous things, right? Unfortunately we have all known what it is like to read without seeing “wondrous things.” We have stared at the most glorious things without seeing them as glorious. We have seen unspeakable love without feeling loved. We have seen immeasurable wisdom and felt no admiration. We have seen the holiness of wrath and felt no trembling. We have all seen without seeing. The reason for this is that all too often we don’t combine our seeing with the act of God-dependent prayer. God has made plain that the path to seeing his peculiar glory is prayer. I often wonder at the end of a day how much I may have missed of the glory and wisdom of God simply by failing to be in a position of constant relational communication with God. I like the way James put it: “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). This is especially true with specific revelation. True understanding of the apostolic word is a free gift of God. We do not find it on our own. It is given. Understanding the Scripture ought to be one of the simplest of tasks. Yet, we so often find it confusing and difficult. Let me be more specific and practical. When we pray for God to show us his glory in the Scripture, we are not asking him to bypass the meaning of the text, but to open the fullness of the author’s meaning. Therefore, in our quest to see and experience the glory of God in Scripture, we pray for his help to understand the basic meaning of the words. Glory does not hover over the text like a cloud to be seen separately from what the authors intended to communicate. It shines in and through what they intended to communicate, which is their meaning. Even this is not quite the way to say it, because the glory is part of what they intended to communicate. But I think it is helpful to distinguish the basic meaning of a passage, on the one hand, and the worth and beauty of the message, on the other hand. I know they are not really separable. And both are part of what the author wants us to experience. Tomorrow we’ll look at a clear illustration of that; however, today make the commitment to be intentional about seeing the wonder of God in everything, especially the Scripture. You will not be sorry for that commitment.