Journey to Jerusalem Day 15

Wednesday, March 3 Psalm 16:5-8

5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
7 I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Why do some persevere in pursuit of a difficult moral goal? Because for them God lies at their right hand (v. 8).

To abide alongside a Near Eastern monarch was alike a sign of high favor and to be placed to bestow favor. Such an honor will be enjoyed in Heaven by Christ, situated at his Father’s right hand. (Acts 7:56) And as men are in Jesus, so shall they be bathed in the light sempiternal, betokening divine mercy and favor without end.

But the shining white radiance of that light falls after Judgement Day.

Here below, the modern poet Thomas Moore interpreted rays of light as symbolic of blessings rained down on the penitent:

Then sorrow, touch' by thee, grows bright with more than rapture's ray;
As darkness shows us worlds of light we never saw by day.

"Light, even though it passes through pollution, is not polluted," Augustine observed in Antiquity. Here the saint underscores that Jesus, the spotless Light of the World, courses through us sinners to guide lost sheep back to him.

Hands. Rays of light. Since biblical times, artistic creativity has informed explorations of the sacred.
Makes sense. Symbols are what we presently live by and, through grace, what our transhistorical destiny may in fact become.

Lord Jesus, as you blessed the Pilot Paul, so endow us with eyes to see and hearts to understand that the things of eternity lie thick around us.
Amen.