Psalm 15: To Dwell is To Walk
The psalms are the prayerful tapestry of everything that it means to be human; thus, it comes as no surprise that they weave a tangled web of contradictions. For instance, Psalm 14v3: all have gone astray, they are all alike perverse… and then in Psalm 15v2, in answer to the question who can dwell on the holy hill of the Lord: those who walk blamelessly? Were we not just told in Ps. 14 that this is an impossible standard? Is God unreasonable and cruel, calling us to unreasonable heights where are bound to run out of oxygen? Many Christians, post-Augustine would say, simply “yes.”
But the psalms demand to be encountered on their own terms. Psalm 15 does not live in the hopeless fatalism of original sin, rather it calls us to a visceral, tangible holiness. In Genesis 1 and 2, the Lord calls to life the heavens and the earth, the seas and the land and fills them all with things that he says are unequivocally good. At the height of this creation we see the key to it all, the woman and man made in the image of God himself. What was God doing when he created the world? He was creating a space where he might reveal his love, a space where heaven and earth would be inseparably interlocked. In short, he was creating a temple. The purpose of all of life, laid out from the beginning of the Scriptures is that humans might dwell face to face with their Creator in grace, worship, and work. Thus the question that Ps. 15 asks is effectively, “Who can live out the true purpose of life?”
The psalmist answers his own lofty question: those who walk in holiness, truthfully, integrity, love, and justice. We live in a world where many talk the talk of righteous indignation. People stand on their self-appointed sides lobbing outrage and vitriol and call it justice. But Ps. 15 simply will not allow this sort of judgmental speculating. Ps. 15 asks the question of each one of us as individuals, what does it mean to dwell with God? To walk. To dwell with God is to walk with God. We don’t get to build a bastion of holy security and seclusion, safe from the outside world. God’s holy hill is not a fortress to be protected but a house in which we arise each day in shalom. And just as the earth constructed a temple in Genesis 1 and 2, the whole earth, which means every aspect of our lives, every moment, and every task is an invitation to behold God’s presence.
The Lord doesn’t stay in his holy tent. The Lord is not found in sanctuaries made with human hands, rather the whole earth is a temple and we, when we carry him into every corner of our lives, his priests. To dwell with the Lord is to walk with him through real, lived life.
For meditation:
-Walk through the list of those who dwell with the Lord, ask the Lord for the strength of his presence to live more like the one described.
-Develop a prayer hook throughout the day. Maybe it’s when you look at your phone, or get in your car, or get a meeting notification. Whatever it may be, let your hook throughout the day remind you to pray this simple prayer of acknowledgment: Lord, you are here.