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Non Sequitor

 Blessed are You, Lord; teach me Your statutes. (Psalm 119: 12)

Non sequitur (2):  a statement (such as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said

          Today’s passage may be described by the definition that follows it. What does God’s being blessed have to do with our learning His statutes? There are some who would say that what causes the Lord’s happiness is making statutes that make life miserable and watching people try (and fail) to jump through all the hoops He has dictated that we must. If not that, how does our learning His statutes relate to God’s being blessed? It makes one want to say, “Huh?” It doesn’t seem to follow.

          I was invited to a high school graduation party a couple years ago. When I got to the bar where it was being held, I found the hostess in tears and drinking herself to oblivion. She and her daughter had argued, and the daughter was not attending the party. The friend waxed eloquent about all she had done for said daughter (not just with the party) and about all the child had done to disappoint and spite her (not just with the party.) This is our image of God sometimes, either crying in His beer, or raging drunkenly about what miserable, pathetic, ungrateful sinners we all are. And in our thinking, the only way that God could possibly be happy is if we clean up our act and become brainless, obedient, perfect little “saints.” We return to the problem of how it can follow that God is blessed before we have learned to obey His statutes.

          There are two stereotypes that might shed light on this idea. The first is the stereotype of the parent of a first born. The parent struggles to do everything right because every action they take will either make or break the child. The second stereotype is the grandparent of the first born, whose main concern is enjoying the child. The pressure is off. The responsibility of making the child be perfect is not theirs.

          God has provided the means by which we may be saved. He has set up the universe in a way that suits Him and us. He has designed us to be well suited to the universe. He is blessed, or happy, because the universe fulfills the function He designed for it. He is happy even when we don’t function within the universe well. Our sin doesn’t please Him. In fact, it displeases Him because what we have done is violates the whole idea of the universe running as it is meant to, but His happiness does not depend on our behavior.

          And as we learn to live according to the statutes He established (and which make Him happy) we will become happy, too.

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