The openness of the 119th

I ask for many things.  The other day, it was for help while phone shopping among too many bundle choices.  A few minutes ago, it was for wasp-killing in the kitchen.  Somehow every time I wanted to swat the wasp, the cat was in the way, and we provided each other frustration and comic relief both.  The point being that I’m often asking the Lord for something specific, whether help with a phone purchase or a job or health or something else.  Yet I read Psalm 119 and see something different.  The psalmist speaks of praise and rejoicing and meditating on precepts, of delighting in the Lord and guarding against deceit.  Lots of whole-being things rather than specifics.  Lots of declaring His righteousness, obeying His statutes, and finding good in affliction, which are much bigger aspects of living than any single pesky wasp in the kitchen.  This psalm models for us a wonderfully open time with the Lord.  Enjoy letting Him mold our thought patterns overall.  Savor the openness of not knowing how exactly He will enter our lives each day.  Leave the ball in His park, so to say, to amaze us and grow us, without our always dictating a laundry list of “Help me with this” and “May I have that?”  Even my encounter with this psalm was by His orchestration.