The Word and the Son

"Blessed are all who take refuge in him." (Psalm 2:12)

Every garden has a gate, and the Psalms tell you exactly where theirs is. Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are the archway. Neither is really about a single subject; they are the two pillars you walk between to get in, and each hands you something you will need once you are inside. Psalm 1 hands you the Word of God: blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditates on it day and night. Psalm 2 hands you the Son of God: it ends with the nations raging and the kings scheming, and then it turns and says, blessed are all who take refuge in him. The Word and the Son. That is what you carry through the arch.

There is another way people try to get in, and it does not work, though most of us have tried it. You can come to prayer wanting an outcome, wanting a resolution, wanting God to do a particular thing on a particular timeline, and you can climb the wall and get in that way. But you will find nothing inside except your own anxiety wearing a religious hat. The garden was never a vending machine, where the right sequence of words drops the desired result into the tray.

You come in with the Word, and you come in with the Son, and you come in to be with someone. That is the whole point of the place. Everything else that grows there, every comfort and correction and joy, grows only because you came for him and not for it.