What Keeps Your Feet on the Ground When So Many Are Losing Their Footing?

I avoid it as much as I can.   It used to be because when I went there, 15 minutes disappeared before I knew it.  But now, I avoid it because I don’t know what I’m going to find.   Inevitably someone, somewhere will be having a fight about something.   And usually the fight has gotten ugly.  All of that depresses me.   In the past, people used Facebook to show off their holidays; brag on their kids or grandkids; maybe show you a cute cat video.   Now, many use it just to have fights.

I don’t simply see it on Facebook alone.  I see it on the road, in the stores, on the sidewalks.  No matter how much money people have or how many things they can watch on TV or the internet, so many seem so unhappy about everything.   It’s led millions to get addicted to painkillers, so much so that their overdose deaths have lowered life expectancy for everyone.  That hasn’t happened in 25 years.  You have children afraid to go to school because someone might shoot them.   It feels as if people have lost their footing.  And, it feels that way because clearly lots of people have. 

In the midst of a world like that, how do you keep your feet on the ground?  How do you not let your life get highjacked by all the things that can twist it up?  In these words, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.   

Psalm 119:97-105

How do you keep your footing when so many things are happening that can easily push you off?  How do you stay rooted in what really matters, even know what really matters?   In these words, God points you what will always keep your feet on the ground, this book   But, here’s the problem.  Lots of people have no idea how this book does this.  So how does it?  The Bible does two main things.   It orients you and it confronts you.

But before we get to that, let’s ask an even more pertinent question.  Why should you pay attention to the Bible at all?  

Why should anyone take time to regularly read an ancient text, most of it well over 3,000 years old?  Yes, it’s been around a long time.  That counts for something.   But no one is guiding their life with stories about the Egyptian gods, and those stories are older.     And sure, the Bible counts as great literature.   But just because you appreciate Shakespeare, doesn’t mean you base your life on it.   So why focus on this book?

In the first sentence we read, you find the answer.  The writer exclaims.  “Oh, how I love your law!”  He’s not just talking about the ten commandments.  He’s talking about the whole book.  He calls it law, because all of it has that authority.  And when you think law, don’t think about law like the speed limit.   No, think about law, as in the law of gravity.   The film-maker Cecil B.DeMille put it well.  “You don’t break the ten commandments.  You break yourself against the ten commandments.”

After all, whose law is this?  This is the law of God, the creator of reality itself.   When you pay attention this book, it’s reality you are paying attention to because the creator of reality inspired it.   Here, God speaks to you.  God speaks to you very, very personally.    So, what is God saying?  

When I was growing up, one of my youth leaders, described the Bible as like the owner’s manual to your car.   It contained the manufacturer’s instructions so to speak.   I appreciate his intent.  But he still got it wrong.  The Bible hardly even gives you practical tips like an owner’s manual will.  

Don’t think of the Bible like that.   Think of the Bible as a compass.  Do you notice in just the few verses that we read all the allusions to a journey?   Three times in just nine verses, the writer talks about feet or a path, including the most well-known verse.  “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.”          

God is telling you.  I am speaking to you here, to keep you from getting lost, to keep your feet where they need to be. 

When my dad was learning how to fly a plane, his instructor early on taught him a valuable lesson.   They flew into this huge cloud, and as they went through it, the instructor asked him.  “So, tell me.  Are we flying right side up or are we flying upside down?”   My dad looked at him wondering; why had he asked such a ridiculous question?  Of course, they were flying right side up.  That was obvious.   Except they weren’t.   In the few seconds they were in that cloud, the plane had turned upside down, and my father had not noticed it.   How did the instructor know?  He looked at the instruments.   He said to my dad. “Your eyes will fool you, but the instruments will always tell you the truth.”  

Many years ago, I remembered that when John F. Kennedy Jr. died flying to his family home in Martha’s Vineyard.  No engine malfunctioned.  No lightning struck that plane.    JFK Jr. had not yet learned to read his instruments.  So, as he flew, he got confused by what he saw.   He thought he was flying up.  Instead he flew his plane directly into the ocean.    

In the world in which we live, all sorts of things will throw you off course, have the power to crash your life.    But when you come to the Bible, it has the power that those instruments had in my father’s plane.  Here, God keeps you oriented, keeps your feet literally on the ground. 

And God isn’t giving you a huge spotlight to guide your steps.  God is giving you a lamp.   Growing up, I went to church camp in Tennessee.  At night, I would take the trail back to my cabin.  It didn’t matter how often I had walked that trail, without a flashlight, I’d either get lost or stumble over a root I had forgotten was there.   If you don’t keep coming back here, you’ll find yourself off the path before you know it.

And even if you do come here, you still can miss the path.  So, what does God do then?  God confronts you.   

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my wife about the challenges our church is facing.  She said to me.  “You can’t figure this out on your own.  You need to talk to someone ahead of you, who has insights you don’t have.”    I was offended.  But after I got over my offense, I had to admit.  She had a point.   The next day, I booked lunch with a pastor in Miami to learn how he had led his church to growth. 

I did not like what my wife said to me, but I needed to hear it.  At an elders’ meeting this week, an elder raised a concern about my work that I didn’t appreciate.   But, afterwards, when we talked further, I first told him that I appreciated his comment.   Then I caught myself.  I said, “No, I didn’t appreciate it, and that’s why I needed to hear it even more.”

If you don’t appreciate what the Bible has to tell you, don’t dismiss it.  It’s often the thing you need to hear the most.   And if you think, “Well, we’ve advanced far beyond that thinking.”   Realize this.  You don’t know what you think you know.   Do you realize half of the things your grandparents believed or knew, people now see as not only wrong, but often offensive?   And a hundred years from now, folks will be thinking the same thing about a lot of things you think you know.    When the Bible confronts you, listen to it.  Wrestle with it.  Pray over it.  But whatever you do, don’t ever dismiss it. 

Don’t ever dismiss it, because what you read here, didn’t stay here.   When you read this psalm all the way through, you might notice something disturbing.  It’s almost like the writer doesn’t just study the law.  He worships it.   What is going on?   Maybe he is sensing that this word will become more than the written page, that this word will come to life.  Or as the gospel of John puts it, “the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” 

You don’t dismiss this word, because this word became flesh.  After all, what do you use words for?  You use them to communicate.   And God far more than words to communicate his love to you.  God became one of us.  In Jesus God died for us, went through agony for you.  Why?   He did it to bring you home.  He did it so that so that even when your feet left the path, you would never be so lost that God could not find you.   And when God came in Jesus, he listened to these words.   He guided his life by them.  And he fulfilled them on that cross.

So, listen to these words.  Read them.  Study them. Meditate on them.   Let them guide you.  Let them confront you.    If you ever wonder why you can trust them, look at this God who made them flesh and out of love laid that flesh down for you.   If you can’t trust a love like that, what can you trust.