Of the many embarrassing moments in my life, there are some that actually make me laugh. I was around five or six and had finally received the present for my birthday I had really desired. It was called Crystal Roller Coaster (C.R.C.), a set of small plastic blocks with holes in them and rails that could be connected together. The point was to construct various ‘Roller Coasters’ for the ball to roll through. Silly, I know, but I liked building things.
At any rate, I had been playing with it for a while in the hallway then had to go to the bathroom. Evidently, as I was in the bathroom performing my duty I began chanting the words “Crystal Roller Coaster” over and over. Not being the most musically inclined, I imagine my chants sounded much like a mix between monastic chants and dog torture. When I concluded my business and emerged from the bathroom my brother (quite possibly all three of them) were standing outside the door and laughing. For months afterward they would randomly chant “Crystal Roller Coaster” and then laugh, causing me to grow quite embarrassed.
As I look back at my affection for the C.R.C., I realize it was merely a temporal love in a long line of temporal loves. Soon after the C.R.C. grew tiresome, I fell in love with a toy rivet gun, and then a game called Comp IV (which I still have, thank you very much), then it was Stretch Armstrong, (a toy I never received until its remake in the mid ‘80s when my mom bought it for me out of pity that I never had it as a kid). After Stretch Armstrong there was something else, then something else, then something else…
As I grew older my affections found new objects such as cars, trips, or some other high priced item. I also grew to love many books, series, and authors, some of which are still on my shelves and some which have been disposed years ago. There have also been many stages to my increasing affection for romantic interests, with regard to both level and frequency, never fully finding anything or anyone to satisfy that inner longing (but that is another story altogether). These are just the phases of temporal loves I can remember at the moment, but I know there have been others, and I know other people have had their own other quite different objects of love. But all of these loves have one thing in common: interest in them eventually wanes because we are built for so much more than any of these things.
The psalmist writes of God when he says “Your righteousness is righteous forever” and of God’s character and ways when he says “Your testimonies are righteous forever;” the key word being “forever.” God’s character never changes and his ways are always righteous. At first glance one might (and I have) question whether being the same forever is really that great of a thing, but as I developed in the last post (Psalm 119 – Pe), the righteousness of God is infinite in depth and beauty, thus making it eternally interesting, an attribute which will provide to us an eternal joy, something which none of the other objects of our love will provide.
But there is more, the psalmist continues on to say how it is through God’s righteousness and God’s righteous ways that life is found. Most of the other things we are drawn grant to us a level of energy and life at firs, but over time the joy decreases and we lose interest. To satisfy ourselves we alter the size, value, or experience so as to achieve something like our original pleasure, but we never gain that back. When I was a child I loved the C.R.C., but when I was an adult I needed something larger and more expensive to scratch that itch of mine, but I can tell you now that no item since then has provided as much joy (maybe I need to go find a buy one again!)
But I find that the words and ways of God are altogether different. Every time I open the scripture to read I find something new that had been hidden from me before. For instance, over the past five years alone I have probably read through the Psalms in their entirety at least ten or twelve times and I am just now beginning to understand them, at least I think I am. Each pass through them brings new depth, not just to the words and structures, but to my knowledge about the God behind the words; I am just now beginning to glimpse and understand his everlasting love, his righteousness, his grace and mercy, and how we all, everyone throughout all of time, long for the eternal but we often look elsewhere. We often run away and search the corners of fading pleasures while God is beckoning us to come back to him where all things are new and incorruptible. And while the C.R.C. was a lot of fun, as well as the cars, the trips, and the relationships, it is only in the words of the eternally righteous God that we will ever find life and by which we will ever truly live.
