Your Word, My Lamp

In the same Psalm, 119, the same singer can say, "My flesh trembles with dread of you; I am afraid of your judgments," and also, "I do not shrink from your judgments, because you yourself have taught me."

I would say, "Dichotomy" and "Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls," but the latter went out of business. So, here is the Oxford definition:

"a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different."

The answer is in the balance and the tension and both are found within the heart of the singer of songs.

They are balanced by love, love of God which arises from the furnace of fear and reverence for God, purified and sanctified as well as love of the law. Both are refined by awe, wonder, and jaw-dropping amazement that is described by and experienced as fear.

Yet, it is not a fear that paralyzes nor repels. It beckons. It draws. It is an irresistible invitation to the love of God that the psalmist describes throughout the cantata that is Psalm 119.

Thus, he can resolve the dichotomy with these lyrics, "How sweet are your words to my taste!, they are sweeter than honey to my mouth."

He exclaims, "Oh, how I love your law! All the day long it is in my mind."

Is this disingenuous then?

"My flesh trembles with dread of you; I am afraid of your judgments."

Is it a contradiction? Is it a symptom of ambivalence? It is a disconnection and reconnection cycle with the realities of one's own emotions?

No. It is balance.

It is the capacity to travel along the circle of truth and view it from degrees, but also, to step back and view the whole. The whole is love and welcome, and well being.

One cannot chart one's path in life from one degree of present circumstances and experience, It requires light from beyond ourselves.

I can say, "I am deeply troubled," and then pray, in the same breath, "preserve my life, O Lord, according to your word."

Why? Because:

"Your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path."

"Oh, how I love your law!"