Paulson Post

'By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life' (Psalm 42:8, ESV). Living fully immersed in the presence of God is the greatest of all experiences. The psalmist says that the whole day he experienced the love of God. Quiet hours of the night is his time to respond to the love that God has showered upon him in songs of prayer. His songs are prayers to God whom he calls 'the God of his life.' The expression 'God of my life' means, the God to whom I owe my life. God is the master of my life, who directs it every day by his steadfast love. Most of us who have to slog eight to twelve hours a day doesn't have much time to experience God. We hop from one task to another without any time to think about God who is the owner of our lives. Though each moment is filled with his acts of love towards us, we seldom recognize that. The Psalmist is different in his attitude. In every task and in every achievem...

'You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.' Matthew 5:14-16 (ESV). Jesus said, 'you are the light of the world.' He did not ask his disciples to be the light of the world or to become one. By default, every disciple of Jesus is the light of the world. The only option is where the lights are placed. It could be covered by a basket so that its light is not visible and useful in any way or it could be mounted on a lampstand. If mounted on the lampstand it will give light to all those who are in the room. In short, the option is to be useful or to be useless. The light ought to shine before others. Being a lamp and being the light are also different. A lamp can choose not to be lighted and not to give out light. However, disciples are not just lamps, they are lighted lamps. Jesus also added that they shine ...

The literature on anxiety is aplenty. YouTube has a lot of advice from experts and non-experts on how to cope with anxiety. I don't want to add to these. What I offer here is a personal insight into the spiritual aspects of anxiety. Anxiety is a type of eclipse, like the lunar or solar eclipse. A lunar eclipse happens when the shadow of earth falls on the moon making the moon invisible to those on earth. But the moon is still there. It is still visible to the Martians! Anxiety works similarly. It casts our own shadow on God so that he becomes invisible to us. God is not in hiding but is hidden to our eyes because our own anxious self is casting the shadow on him. Then we blame God for hiding from us as the Psalmists often do in their prayers. God is not hiding, but we have made God vanish from our consciousness. That is why the Bible says 'Do not be anxious about anything!' This is very much in line with what Jesus taught: ' Therefore I tell you, do not...

Jesus invited the crowd that followed him: ' Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. ' (Matthew 11:29-30). The modern mind may be puzzled when a religious guru invites people to come under a yoke. First, most of us living in the age of cars, planes and metros, may not have even a yoke. Those of us who might have seen one know that it is something that joins either a pair of burden-carrying animals to each other to pull a cart. So, we usually attach ideas like subjugation and suffering to this symbol. However, that is not what Jesus meant or his hearers might have understood. For the pious Jews who were Jesus' audience that day yoke carried meanings more than subjugation. In their religious writings 'coming under the yoke' was a metaphor for being obedient to someone, especially the Law of Moses which guided the life and faith every Jew. When som...

'For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy' (Psalms 72:12-13)  There are times when realize how frail we are; these are times when ll the self-confidence that we have gathered over the years vanish. Coming to the limits of our strength is a scary experience. In such times, faith in God strengthens us. God strengthens those who are weak and needy. He is willing and able to help them. The only thing we need is to realize our helplessness and reach out to God in faith trusting in his mercy and power.

"Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!" Psalm 66:20 (ESV). What does answered prayers demand from us? Most of us seek God when we are out of our depths in adversities. We feel the need of God when we reach the end of the ropes. However, God is a kind God; he answers us when we cry out to him from the depths of our adversities. Every answered prayer requires from us to learn something more about the character of God. The psalmist shares with us what he has learned from God when he cried unto God, and he graciously answered his prayer. He learned that God still loves him. Answered prayers reminds us that God hasn't 'removed his steadfast love' from us. This is the response of a grateful heart; to believe that we are objects of God's ardent love.

"For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations." Psalms 100:5 When I write this cyclone Nisarga is about to hit our coastlines. The weather department has issued a red-alert. It is likely to cause immense casualties. The  Coronavirus is lurking everywhere we go. Swarming locusts have reached deep south in Tamil Nadu in their flight from the North western deserts. They have already stomached most of our food supplies for the year. Surrounded by all these, we need a lot of faith to say that God's love still triumphs. It is an act of faith. These are times when our faith in a good and loving God is tested. We need the grace to say, in the midst of all these bad things, that God is good.