Blessed or Bitter?

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Psalm 63:3 ESV)

When I was a hospital chaplain at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas our department director was a man by the name of Joe Gross. Joe had the appearance of a large and burly man, not what you picture when you think of a pastoral caregiver. He looked more like a Marine. But Joe had a perceptive mind, a caring heart and some deep wisdom.

I’ll never forget one of his teaching sessions with us. He remarked about a well known saying, “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” That phrase gets thrown around easily in a hospital setting. It’s a way of finding something positive in the midst of difficulty or suffering. But Joe didn’t buy it. He told us that the phrase was not true – at least not always. Sometimes, he said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you bitter.”

Often, since that time, I’ve wondered what makes the difference. What makes the difference between a person who emerges from something difficult as a blessed person and one who simply becomes bitter? Part of the answer is in this verse from Psalm 63. “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.”

When I was pondering this statement a while back, I was struck by the boldness of this prayer. The Psalmist is almost defiant in exalting the glory of God and the worth of God’s love above any earthly attachments. I liked the words, and I felt like this was something I wanted to be able to say – but I had an objection. The verse seemed to create a dualism between God’s love and the experiences of life.

Don’t we know the love of God in the stuff of life? Don’t we know God’s love in the voices of our children, the sounds and sights of early morning, the smell of food, the way we feel when we laugh hard, the smell of cut grass, the delight of human touch – holding hands and a good long back rub? Our spirituality is not disembodied. We know God’s love in the earthiness of our lives, in detail. As Eugene Peterson says, “abstraction is the devil’s work.”

All of this is true. We do know God’s love that way – but here’s the problem.

There are many people who can’t have children or who have lost children. There are many people who never feel another human touch, or the touch they feel is violent. There are many who no longer recognize their own family members, who cannot see a sunrise, who do not have enough food to eat, who will never own a home with a yard where they cut the grass.

So if we know the love of God in the stuff of life, then God’s love is “hit and miss.” Not everyone gets in on it.

The best way to understand the Psalmist’s prayer is to understand that while we may experience God’s love in the details of life, God’s love is something other than God’s gifts. If we confuse God’s gifts with God’s love we will be more likely to become bitter people. Bitterness takes root when we place the weight of our sense of rightness and well being on our family, our health, our income or career, our retirement plans and bank accounts. We may know these in abundance – but maybe not. And then what?

When these gifts are no longer ours, there is still the love of God. And we can come at it from the other direction. To have these gifts apart from the love of God is to soon discover how empty they can be. They really can’t bear the entire weight of our happiness.

So I want to do what they Psalmist says. I want my lips to praise God for every gift of grace I know in this life. And should the gift be taken away, I want to be found still praising. I want to live as one blessed, not bitter. The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life.