Reflection on Psalm 119:78--The Games People Play

"Let the arrogant be put to shame, because they have subverted me with guile; as for me, I will meditate on your precepts."
The world is full of people trying constantly to play each other for suckers. My 4-year-old already knows how to manipulate situations to her advantage. Every marriage has spoken and unspoken power struggles, every church has ways the people vie for control. Pity the preacher who doesn't understand that the real decisions are made under the oak tree before or after the official meeting!
These games are exhausting. Many of us don't want to play them, but we feel compelled to because we have been victimized when we didn't play close enough attention. Life can turn into a chess game.
We are all more impressed with our own ability to play these games than we are actually capable of winning them. "Let the arrogant be put to shame, because they have subverted me with guile." It is because we are arrogant--we think we can win--that we engage the subverting games we play against each other. We fail to realize that, as Rosy Perez told Woody Harrelson in 'White Men Can't Jump,' "Sometime when you win, you really lose; and sometimes when you lose, you really win." Even when we win the head games and power games we play with each other, we lose ourselves and lose the ability to be whole people who are connected to God, ourselves, and each other. We are "put to shame."
So how do we live in a world full of subverting, arrogant games without becoming part of the game or being victimized by those who play games with us? The Psalmist prays, "I will meditate on your precepts." The Psalmist does not have time or attention for the games, the subversion, the undermining, the power struggle. He's too busy tending to his own stuff. He's too busy letting God call him out, straighten him out, show him a new way to think, to live, to be. He doesn't have room in his head or his calendar for God's project of conforming his soul to God's ways while simultaneously struggling with everyone else for control of things. So, he has to hand over control to God. He has to leave the struggles and games for God to take care of. He puts the "arrogant" in God's hands--"You deal with them; I'm too busy dealing with YOU and with ME."
Now there's a choice we can make that can lead us to a path of sanity in the midst of a crazy world. And, when we refuse to play the game with others, oftentimes they will give up the game themselves. Give it a try. It can't work out any worse than the way we've been doing it so far.

Thought for the Day from BCP Daily Reading

"Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes." ~Psalms 119:23

Imagine how much it would feel like you were in crisis if a prince were making a plot against you! And yet, the Psalmist refuses to be sucked into a crisis. He keeps focused on his life's central program--learning and training to think and live as God's person. God has a lifelong program for each of us that requires daily reprogramming, daily attention to His Spirit, daily reorientation through scripture. 

It's easy when a crisis comes to become reactive and set aside the process of become disciples and saints--"I'll do that when I get through this mess this week!" When we live like that, our lives end up going from crisis to crisis. The Psalmist determines that no matter what's going on around him, he's going to put God's training regimen for his soul first. When we seek his righteousness first, it allows us to navigate even times of crisis without being sucked into crisis and becoming reactive people.  

Today, meditate on his statutes. The whirling storm will be waiting for you when you return to it, and you will have a better head to deal with whatever life throws at you.