Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-196 Sunday 11 Nov 2001

Reading: PSALM 86 – GIVE ME AN UNDIVIDED HEART!

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

‘The more we pray, the greater … our hunger for God … A phrase … heard often … will one day come with the urgency of a telegram and the name on the envelope is no longer “Everyman” but “You”‘ (Sheila Cassidy, Prayer for Pilgrims, HarperCollins, 1980, 1994).

‘Hear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy’ (v 1): the Lord’s delight in those who are willing to be teachable (v 11) and unashamedly dependent on him (v 7), is a powerful theme in Scripture (See also 2 Kings 5:9-15; 2 Cor 12:7-10). This way, it seems, lies wholeness, the coming together of our lives into harmony under God’s lordship.

This psalm seems to me to be an expression of longing for true wholeness. It gives us words for our quest for authentic humility. The magnetic north of the poet’s compass is not his meagre self (v 1) but the loving, merciful, joy-bringing, responsive God he is daily learning to trust (vs 2-7).

Awareness of our lack of wholeness, our divided and proud heart, comes about in different ways: an encounter with someone whose deeply attractive integrity shows up our shabby ambiguities; or some crisis (vs 13,14,16) which pushes us to take stock of our position and direction (v 11) and – perhaps – return again to the certain truth of God’s nature (v15).(See also Exod 34:6,7. Luke 15:13-20.)

The French Christian thinker Paul Ricoeur has written on the transforming power of Jesus’ parables that ‘it is in the heart of imagination that we let the Event happen, before we may convert our heart and tighten our will’ (The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Beacon Press, 1978). I suggest we let our imaginations work on the image of the ‘undivided heart’ and the dimensions of the ‘Event’ of wholeness to which we still need to be converted.

‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control …’ (Gal 5:22,23).

– Pauline Hoggarth

Copyright Scripture Union, 2001

To order your quarterly edition of ‘Encounter with God’ or to enquire about other SU publications, contact the office nearest your region:

Australia – East Asia – Pacific – USA – or http://www.scriptureunion.org Canada – UK & International Office –