Grounded!

In a reflection written for Give Us This Day, Nancy Dallavalle writes about an incident when her teen-aged daughter was grounded for two weeks as a result of an incident when "she had clearly lost her footing."  Dallavalle's purpose was to firmly re-introduce her daughter to the family and its values.  Amazingly, as the 16-year-old turned away from 'the noisy intrusions of friends and busyness and glamour," she found that she was actually relieved.  In the two weeks of her 'punishment,' she discovered "the fullness of a newborn freedom in her own heart."

Just after reading Dallavalle's observation, I turned to Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the Bible.  This psalm is an anacrostic based on the Hebrew alphabet.  Each stanza is based on one of the letters of the alphabet, and each line of that stanza begins with that letter.  It's too bad we cannot read this psalm in the original language; even in translation, it is a marvelous work.  The entire 176 verses are devoted to the praise of God's Law -- and each line finds a synonym for "law:" decrees, commands, word, statutes, instruction, etc. 

The theme of Psalm 119 is the delight, the joy, the freedom the writer finds in following the decrees and commands of God:  Turn my eyes away from worthless things; renew my life according to your word (v. 37).  We might say that is exactly what happened when Dallavalle's daughter was 'grounded' for two weeks---she re-discovered her soul, the freedom of her own life, instead of the distractions that pulled her away from her own values into the values of those around her.  Her family's "word" became her guiding star once again, and she was truly "grounded" in good soil.

I have always been a lover of trees; all my life, I have felt at home under the trees, watching the movement of the trees, their freedom to move with the wind.  One of the most beautiful sights to me is the graceful movement of trees bending and swaying in the wind.  Paradoxically, they are free to 'move' because they are so rooted and grounded.  Unlike litter and debris that fly around with every breeze, trees remain where they are, arms uplifted to receive the wind. 

This is what reading Scripture has done for me; it has rooted and grounded me in Truth, so that I can receive the movements of the Spirit without fear of being blown around and uprooted.  Novelty and fashion and flattery and criticism and fear no longer have the power to unsettle and distract me as they once did, for my heart is rooted firmly in solid ground.  Still, the gentle sway of the Spirit can make me feel alive and directed to its movement within.  I love being 'grounded' by the Word of the Lord, and I love these verses from Psalm 119:

Lord, teach me the way of your statutes,

and I will keep them to the end.

Grant me insight that I may keep your law,

and observe it wholeheartedly.

 

Guide me in the path of your commands,

for in them is my delight.

Bend my heart to your decrees,

and not to wrongful gain.

 

Turn my eyes from gazing on vanities;

in your way, give me life (vv. 33-39).

 

A worthy prayer might be to meditatively read/pray Psalm 119, not all at once, but over a period of a week or two.