Our Search for Meaning

May 18, 2017

Our Search for Meaning

Both day and night belong to you;

you made the starlight and the sun.

You set the boundaries of the earth,

and you made both summer and winter.

Psalm 74:16-17

As I read Psalms 73 and 74, I keep thinking of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian who survived concentrations camps in the Holocaust to become a highly acclaimed neurologist and psychiatrist. His experiences in the concentration camps taught him, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance” and, ““When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning 1946).

The psalmist was trying to make sense out of the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of Israel. The psalmist was in deep thought about the meaning of life. He concluded that he, and Israel, had to accept responsibility for their actions. This is a continuing theme in Frankl’s writings. (Viktor Frankl once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.) Long before President Kennedy urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you . . .” Frankl wrote “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” (Man's Search for Meaning)

The psalmist’s style of speaking directly to God was his way of demonstrating his recognition that it was God who was suffering for the sins of Israel. God’s creation of beauty and order is wounded deeply by the willful disobedience of humans.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.