Saints' Discussion Forums

Psalm 103, Extracts

The Lord is compassion and kindness,
full of patience, full of mercy.
He will not fight against you for ever:
he will not always be angry.
He does not treat us as our sins deserve;
he does not pay us back for our wrongdoing.

As high as the sky above the earth,
so great is his kindness to those who fear him.
As far as east is from west,
so far he has put our wrongdoing from us.
As a father cares for his children,
so the Lord cares for those who fear him.

For he knows how we are made,
he remembers we are nothing but dust.
Man - his life is like grass,
he blossoms and withers like flowers of the field.
The wind blows and carries him away:
no trace of him remains.

I just love this psalm.. it has such depth to it.. it's like watching a gigantic field and sky.. and the stars beyond...

And watching dust blow away.

How touching is that!

                                    I love that psalm too. How good God is to us all.

Here's another cause for great hope when we hear St Paul speaking of himself in Romans 7 about how he longs to be free from sin but can't while he's in the flesh.

                                         
                                                               The Conflict of Two Natures

For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.

For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.

So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,

 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Ah, how much this sums up the interior life in so many ways! How directly it speaks to the soul!

'Verily all the inhabitants of earth do die, young men and old, little children and adults, for no age or bodily stature is exempt from death. Why, then, is man tormented by this exceeding grief? Doubtless the very aspect of death begets sadness; for we behold in a dead man the face changed, the figure dead, the body shrunk up with emaciation, the mouth silent, the skin cold, the carcass prostrate on the ground, the eyes sunken, the limbs immoveable, the flesh wasted away, the veins congealed, the bones whitened, the joints dissolved, all parts of him reduced to dust, and the man no longer existing. What, then, is man? A flower, I say, that is but for a little time, which in his mothers' womb is not apparent, in youth flourishes, but which in old age withers and departs in death.'

St. Alexander of Alexandria

Brings it home how short life is on this earth and how foolish of us to cliing to the things of this world so much.

"I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good."

"For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,"

"on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God,"

The positive in there.. in that a person agrees that the body's way is evil and hate it, and love the other path.. there is God!