I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
I have no good besides You.
(I wrote the following over a month ago but didn't post it. I've come along a bit from this point in my recent spiritual journey, but decided to go ahead and post this as a "record").
I began my search for comfort and some resolution of God’s sovereignty over my injury through the Psalms beginning with Psalm 1:1. It took reading through 15 Psalms to get to this one. This was the first verse that I came across that hit me because it’s just so radical. I don’t know how comforting it is, really, but it struck me. Every good and perfect gift comes to me from God, no doubt about that. So every good thing that I ever had or will have has its origin in the LORD, and so it’s logically true that “I have no good besides” the LORD. But somehow I think the meaning here is just the opposite. I think “no good besides You” is meant to express exclusion rather than inclusion of “all good things” and contrast all of God’s gifts with God Himself. Thinking this through, it’s very very radical. My wife and kids, house and livelihood, talents and achievements, healthy right knee and injured left knee are “no good” to me, at least not compared to having Him. He is the supreme value. At least I think that’s what it means, and it seems to correlate with Philippians 3:8. In my heart that came to Jesus fully almost thirty years ago I think somewhere down deep I hold to this truth, too, but with my running on the line, which seems so precious to me, it is right now hard to confess that “I have no good besides You.”
