Psalm 131 is one of the Psalms of Ascent. I like it very much. One day last week Psalm 131 was among the morning psalms. It seemed as if it might be encouraging to some of my friends, so I shared it in email messages to those friends. But as I pasted the text of the psalm into the body of the email, a warning from Microsoft advised me that the tone of the passage was not to its liking.

Rather than comparing his soul within him to a weaned child with its mother, Bill Gates thought it might be better simply to say, “I am very sensitive.” The arrogant oligarch of Seattle thinking he might better at understanding human experience than the sweet psalmist of Israel (2 Samuel 3:21).

But it is not just Gates’ pedestrian prose that it is the problem. The poetry of the psalm is not describing a sensitive person; it is painting a picture of the person who has found rest in Christ.

Thomas Boston, an Eighteenth Century Scottish pastor, writes in his commentary on Psalm 131, “The soul is weaned at its first conversion to God. Then it is taken off the breasts; but it is hard work, and tedious. The soul is never perfectly weaned until death. As there is an uneasiness and fretfulness in new weaned children, until thoroughly weaned, so is there in the case of the children of God while here…When the soul is weaned, the long war between our own will and the will of God is at an end, and our will runs captive after the wheels of the Lord’s triumphant chariot. (The Nature and Effects of a Weaned Disposition of Soul)

John Calvin notes, “David adds, my soul is quieted, not as expressing the language of self-confidence, but speaking as if his soul lay sweetly and peacefully on his bosom, undisturbed by inordinate desires.”

The “very sensitive” person is often fragile, self-concerned and unwilling or unable to do the hard and tedious work of weaning him or herself from what Boston describes as the “pleasures, profits, and comforts” of the world. The soul calmed and quieted like a weaned child knows that days of uneasiness and fretfulness are still ahead and has learned to not occupy itself with things too great or marvelous. The weaned soul is a humble soul, even insensitive to the sensitivities that make our time.

Jesus, whose glorious resurrection we celebrate on Sunday, invites those of us who labor and are heavy laden to come to him that he might give us rest. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” he says, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.”

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” he adds. (Matthew 11:28-30)

The gentle and lowly one call us to his rest, even to being people, like a weaned child with its mother, of calmed and quieted souls.

It may be that Bill Gates really is a sensitive person. Would that he might know what it means to be a person of a calmed and quieted soul.

We spent this past weekend in the big city and stayed near downtown and the university district. Our breakfast at a trendy café in an old factory building was one of the best breakfasts ever. I had a pork sausage, goat cheese, caramelized onions, and herbs omelet. The coffee was self-service, rich and good. Right above the various creamers, dairy and otherwise, was a plain framed sign. “Imagine Peace,” it read.

The cynic in me took the sign to be a form of virtue signaling, a way to assuage the consciences of those of us spending way too much money on a very good weekend breakfast. The patrons who drove in their non-Tesla EVs from the leafy suburbs with their “love spoken here” lawn signs or others who biked over from the nearby loft apartments (or tourists in the big city) would have felt a bit less guilty imagining peace as they ate their California Dreamer omelet or avocado toast and carried on knowing conversations over good coffee.

Yes, I had placed the politics and the vibe of our breakfast café. “Imagine all you want,” I thought, “What good will it do in a world like ours?” Continue reading →

I didn’t ask for the Fitness App to be installed on my iPhone, but Apple put it there anyway. Not as sophisticated as when it is linked to an iWatch, it nevertheless keeps track of my movements during the day, especially when I am out on my morning run. At some point several years ago, apparently around the iOS 14 upgrade and unbeknownst to me, the app set some goals for my daily calorie burn. It seems Apple knows enough about me to think it has an idea of how active I ought to be. And then, to encourage my submission to its dictates, the app offers me awards, “digital equivalents of enamel pins or badges.” I earned a badge for meeting or exceeding my goal 365 times, but as soon as I did it upped the ante to 500 times. I’ve got a fake enamel pin for the number of times I have exceeded my goal by 200%, and another for all my perfect weeks. Apple says I ought to challenge my friends to an awards competition. Private message me and I will decline your dare.

So, an app I did not want measures me against standards I did not set. And I am checking those pins and badges all the time.

Now, this could be a rant against invasive and manipulative technology, and invasive and manipulative technology deserves all the rants we can give it. But I want to turn a different direction at this intersection. Continue reading →

You’ve probably received a text similar to the one above (it’s okay, just a link to NBC news).  You immediately delete and report as junk, but if you are like me, you feel a little annoyed by the whole thing. What about those we know who don’t delete and report as junk, what about those who may be victimized by the scam? Who are these people sending bogus messages that prey on the unaware and unsuspecting?

The turnpike toll scam is just one in a trillion-dollar (don’t worry, just a link to USA Today) industry of high tech robbery.

I find myself wanting not justice, but vengeance. We don’t know if David, the Sweet Psalmist of Israel, was the victim of a phishing scam when he wrote in Psalm 35, but it sounds as if he may have been:

For without cause they hid their net for me;
without cause they dug a pit for my life.
Let destruction come upon him when he does not know it!
And let the net that he hid ensnare him;
let him fall into it—to his destruction!

Yes! May those toll fee scammers be ensnared in their own net, may they fall into their own pit! Continue reading →

I came across the problem quite accidentally. But there it was. A problem. Literally in black and white and undeniably a problem, a problem defined as a serious breach of ethical standards. Probably not illegal, but definitely unethical. Now, I was fairly certain – and all the more so now – that the breach of ethical standards was unintentional. Nevertheless, a breach it was, and it is a problem. I don’t know the perpetrator of the problem, but I know the organization under whose work the breach was committed, and I appreciate the good it does. So, I made the report, a suggestion to someone in the organization I know that something ought to be done to repair the breach. Yes, it might take some time, cost some money, and offend the unintentional culprit. He said he’d get back to me and it could be next week.

I am nervous.

At first, I questioned my integrity in even raising the issue. That’s where the mote and beam came in. The photo above is of a painting by Domenico Fetti, a baroque painter, circa 1619. Fetti was Italian and the painting is one in a series from the parables of Jesus. The English translation of each parable is typically from the King James Bible, hence the title Mote and Beam. (How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Matthew 7:4 KJV) Continue reading →