Today we’re on psalm 34 and it is a psalm of thankfulness. It’s difficult to pick one section to write on, but in verses 12-14 David says something that jumped out at me. He said, “Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”

Let’s take it one piece at a time…

“Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days…” 

I don’t know about you, but he’s got me there. I want to have an amazing life. I want a story that only God can write. I’m not content with the idea of surviving or just getting by. David has me here, so I need to care about what he says next.

“Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies…”

I don’t know about you, but I’m a talker. Some people think in pictures or numbers…I think in words. There is rarely a moment when I feel like I don’t have something to say. This propensity makes the above passage a bit difficult for me. Because there is usually a short distance between what I feel and what I’m saying, sometimes I let the wrong thing fly out. I’m pretty dogmatic about never lying, but evil encompasses a lot more than simply lying. Evil is anything that is not in line with God’s good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2) Especially with those who are closest to me, I can be pretty loose with my tongue. This passage isn’t a call for Christians to be tightrope walkers when it comes to how we speak…fearful of ever saying the wrong thing. That’s not what this passage is about. What it is about is us acknowledging that what we say holds weight. We should be careful and considerate in our speaking. We also learn from scripture that what we say comes from the heart. (Luke 6:45) David is actually telling us to fill our hearts with good, so that good comes forth when we speak. Let’s move on to the next part of the passage.

“Turn from evil and do good…”

Before we can heed David’s advice here, we must first have some sort of a working definition of “good” and “evil.” How would you define them? I will give you a concise version of my thoughts and then leave it to you to ponder. Good would be anything that is consistent with who God is and what he wants. Who then, is God and what does he want? 1 John 4:8 says that “God is love.” In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus told us the 2 greatest commandments in all of scripture. You can check the passage out here. In this passage, he tells us that loving God and loving people is what God wants from us. So God is love and he wants us to love him and others. Now, back to our text. Turning from evil would therefore look like turning away from everything that is not consistent with God’s love. If you want to be thorough, you should want to know what God’s love looks like. We should not assume that his love is the same as ours. For a succinct definition of God’s love, check out 1 Corinthians 13. Doing good would then mean doing what God wants and we already determined what that essentially is…loving God and loving others. And finally…

“seek peace and pursue it.”

Sometimes the holidays are the last place you would look for peace. With relatives, credit card debt, shopping and the like, peace can be difficult to come by this time of year. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, so I thought it’d be worth checking out the Hebrew word for peace. That word is shalowm and the definition is completeness, soundness welfare. (Reference) Sounds good, doesn’t it? I want more of that. I want it between God and I, between me and myself and between myself and others. It would take a separate post to explore how to get this, but do you seek peace? I know people who seem to hunt for drama and division. They have to be talking behind others’ backs. They need to be gossiping about who said what and to whom. They seek division and discord. We all have our reasons for the things we do, but this passage is clear that if we want life and good days, this is not how we should live. We must seek peace.

I want life and good days. I want the life I was created to live. My hunch is that you probably do too. The question is…will we diligently and consistently fight for that which we seek?