Don’t Try to Impress God

We live in a world in which we think that we can make something of ourselves by impressing others.  Indeed, we put ourselves under great pressure to adequately impress people.  We even live under the illusion that we ought to find some way to impress God.  But what could we do that would adequately impress the Creator of the universe?

Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, writes of a lanyard he made at summer camp one summer and gave to his mother, imagining, at the time, that it would impress her.  The poem concludes with these stanzas:

She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now, is a smaller gift-not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother-

but the rueful admission that when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Psalm 132 reflects a similar dynamic.  The psalm opens by recalling how King David wanted to build a house for God.  From David’s perspective, a temple would be the kind of gift that would adequately impress God.  But the truth is that the most magnificent temple anyone could build is really no more impressive to God than a child’s lanyard.  The gold which lined the walls of the temple failed to impress God, for the book of Revelation informs us that the roadways of heaven are paved with gold.  Carved doors, ornate designs upon the walls, bronze pillar, and even golden cherubim that filled the temple with beauty are no better than a preschooler’s art project compared to God’s awesome masterpieces like Antelope Canyon, Half Dome in Yosemite, the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, or Angel Falls in Venezuela. 

Like Billy Collin’s Lanyard poem, Psalm 132 faces the huge discrepancy between the gifts we give to God, and the gifts God gives to us.  Though David sought to build a fabulous house for “the Mighty One of Jacob,” verse 7 admits that this fabulous house is but a “footstool” for God’s feet.  The great gifts mentioned in this psalm are not the things we give to God, trying to impress God, but the things God gives to us out of love. 

It starts with David.  David had wanted to build a house (a building) for God, but God turns it around and makes David and his descendants into a great house (a great lineage).  Verses 11-12 tell us, “The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: ‘One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.  If your sons keep my covenant and my decrees that I shall teach them, their sons also, forevermore, shall sit on your throne.’”

The Israelites, too, may have thought they were giving an impressive gift to God by making pilgrimages to Jerusalem to bless God with their presence at the temple (“Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool”—verse 7).  But the truly great gift is that God commits to live among his people (“For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation: ‘This is my resting place forever; here I will reside, for I have desired it’”—verses 13-14). 

Our gifts to God are like plastic lanyards.  God’s gifts to us are astronomically greater, for they flow to us out of the fullness of God’s love and goodness!  The essence of our faith is far more about what God pours out to us than about what we give to God.