Learning From London
A New Commentary on Psalm 103:13-18
I feel small walking up Watling Street toward St. Paul’s majestic dome Not small in stature, but in span. Celebrating my 60th in the capital of the United Kingdom, I hope for another two score years on this planet. Yet before me is a structure completed 6 lifetimes before mine began, resting upon the bones of an earlier church for 7th-century followers of Jesus.1 The lesson of London was reinforced in the British Museum.
There I found myself awash in relics from thousands of generations of human beings. In 10 paces, I could walk through an entire civilization and into the next. I walked past a harp played 500 years before Abraham, a beautifully decorated chair leg that gave rest to weary travelers long before the birth of King David, and a wine bowl of King Artaxerxes, which could have been handled and even sipped, by the biblical Nehemiah in his duties as cupbearer for the King.2
My mind blurs with the sheer multitude of remnants from civilizations now dead. But their collective lesson becomes ever clearer. I am diminished in their presence. My life is simply a moment in time. As King David sang, in a composition played on his harp, “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.”3
Strangely, this lesson does not depress me. I am relieved that my experience is not, in fact, the center of the universe. I am unburdened by the fact that my opinion does not define existence for everyone else. I let go of my failure to control the ebb and flow of political and ideological tides among fellow citizens. London is the hard proof I need to be free.
King David bookended his song with this freedom. Before and after the above verses he sang:
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”4
and then:
“But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children – with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.”5
The fiction that I’m responsible for remaking the world has lost all credibility for me. I can no longer hold up a facade that wildly overestimates my place in the Universe. In light of London, I will join in David’s song. I will express kindness to strangers. I will forgive those who have wronged me. I will encourage my children (and one day my children’s children) on their journey through the ups and downs of life.
I will use my life, each day, to makegoodhappen…however many days I have.
St. Paul’s was completed in 1710. The 1666 great fire of London destroyed the previous “Old St. Paul’s” church. The first church on this site was built in 604.
Psalm 103:15-16. A Psalm of David.
Psalm 103:13-14.
Psalm 103:17-18