Light In The Darkness

Psalm 112 reads as follows from the New King James version of the Bible:

1 Praise the LORD!

Blessed is the man who fears the LORD,
Who delights greatly in His commandments.

2 His descendants will be mighty on earth;
The generation of the upright will be blessed.
3 Wealth and riches will be in his house,
And his righteousness endures forever.
4 Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness;
He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.
5 A good man deals graciously and lends;
He will guide his affairs with discretion.
6 Surely he will never be shaken;
The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance.
7 He will not be afraid of evil tidings;
His heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.
8 His heart is established;
He will not be afraid,
Until he sees his desire upon his enemies.

9 He has dispersed abroad,
He has given to the poor;
His righteousness endures forever;
His horn will be exalted with honor.
10 The wicked will see it and be grieved;
He will gnash his teeth and melt away;
The desire of the wicked shall perish.

New King James Version (NKJV)

This psalm is headlined by the verse which refers to light arising from the darkness out of the favor of the Lord upon one individual.

It also offers a picture of prosperity, abundance and lasting wealth out of the goodness of the Lord within his blessings for the individual.

In the history of the church and within the interpretation of the Bible and traditions of the church, there have been more austere teachings and followings where riches and worldly goods were to a degree shunned and a more esthetic and possibly spiritually tilted approach was the more idealized lifestyle.

While there is some truth to that approach, everything can be balanced in different ways and some people might be called to material prosperity in combination with spiritual prosperity and this psalm is giving a picture of material prosperity as being desirable and of the Lord if combined with proper spirituality.

The light arising out of the darkness is something you otherwise could not have. Especially then, there weren't the great means for night light available and even now, things such as a striking sunset and different arrays of light are not orchestrated in any way by the beholder or beneficiary of such events.

I may benefit from this light, indeed it may have been meant for personally as espoused in this psalm, but I certainly did not cause it or bring it about.

The light occurring in the darkness has no origin in anything I did or bring about.Star power will arise from other sources.

Overall you might only have a limited stance in the causality of things but there is not a chance of begetting your own light out of the darkness within the vision of this psalm.

The darkness involved, experienced or described could also be spiritual darkness.

Immersion in spiritual darkness can result in or correlate with material lack or prevent material blessings.

At the least the blessed man in this psalm is not ignoring the Lord or the admonition of the call to prayer and to attend to the ways of the Holy Spirit.

If the Lord wishes to address or attend to the individual with tangible benefits or gifts, they shouldn't automatically be judged by those that are more spiritually attuned as less than because they are wrought through spiritual means and a spiritually based relationship yet have formed into material benefits and advantages. The Lord might want us to have material things and of course we have to have things like shoes because you can't walk around barefoot. There is at the least a minimal of material needs but problems do arise when people want thousands of pairs of shoes for themselves as they go to the other end of the spectrum on things.

Indeed it may not be a contradiction for a monk to have a yacht He could meditate on the yacht.

You can't assume a no answer if you never asked. That a prayer you never said was unanswered. Even in everyday relationships in matters, asking is involved and if you don't ask you might not get an answer..

At the same time, the call is more so to the presence of prayer, rather than always specific asking as you don't even know what you deep down really want in many cases and the Lord will read into things for you including what you really do want. So the call to asking is often more generalized than filling into to specifics which are largely unknown and unknowable. But you can still get into specifics in a more round off fashion rather than minutia.

Prayer is also contextual to a prayer relationship that is continually cultivated, which grows and brings forth fruit which could include material things as well as spiritual things.

For example, how much and how well you are praying is the subject of debate, but not doing it at all is certainly not on course.

In James Chapter 1 it talks about not wavering in your requests to the Lord in prayer. Wavering in a sense would include not even making the requests in the first place. You could waver away from the boldness of approaching the throne of grace in prayer at all.

The blessed man in this psalm had fixed his course with the Lord and did not waver.

Staying fixed on the Lord would mean holding on and letting other goals and strivings stay secondary.

Staying fixed would also include keeping accordance with principles such as giving which this blessed man in this psalm did out the abundance of his wealth. He still had plenty left for himself.

It might not be wealth you are giving, it could be say just time in intercessory prayer or some other ministry involving attention towards others in need.

The call is to some sort of outreach through available means.

Other versions of the Bible speak of a fixed course in verse 6 and 7 of this psalm.

The original King James version reads as follows for verse 7:

He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.

The fixed course of staying with the ways of the Lord will be available, it is a matter of free will as to whether it will be followed and kept with.

The straight line is more attitudinal rather than a matter of finding any clear chain of events and the fixed course more so has less tangible aspects to it.

Despite the relative intangibility of the fixed course this blessed man was on, tangible benefits did accrue and were found on this course.

Not only did the Lord bring to him tangible benefits, first with the arising of light out of the darkness and then into a picture of prosperity, the Lord also secured these blessings from invaders or [potential outside enemies of the blessings, whether these enemies were more from the material realms or also of the spiritual realms.

It is easily understood, that someone could spend years striving for something and get it and lose it right away. Blessings and gifts have the aspect of needing to be secured and the Lord is doing this for the man depicted in this psalm.

The idea of light arising out of the darkness speaks of a causality that cannot be channeled and found through say extended work and effort over days, weeks and months. Any strong and extended focus and effort involves only guesswork as to what the outcomes involved with this might be. This is not the same as the light of the sun which arises for everybody, these are specific blessings that occur towards and are advanced into the presence of individuals out of the goodness of the Lord to them and is more in the realm of a reward of the Lord's choosing that is canvassed over symbolically the darkness which is symbolically a place where there really was no source or hope of a blessing. .

It may be the light would arise from darkness in unusual and unexpected ways but the ways of the Lord are different at times than we might expect so expect surprises on this journey where the unexpected magnificent light of blessings occurs in ways previously unknown and unforeseen.