Psalms Archives - Joyfully Pressing On

Rough Day? Rest on the Pillow of Providence

Posted on February 21, 2021February 28, 2021 by abigail

We hit a new low. We’ve had bad weeks in our house before, but this week’s behavior borders on criminal. Still, there’s a reason this blog is called JoyfullyPressingOn. My times are in his hands; every jaw-dropping event in his providence.

To protect the guilty one I love, I won’t share details. But trust me, if I told you, your jaw would drop too. You’d ask, “What are doing about that?”

So why do I disclose this much?

Because I know that some of you are facing tough stuff too—that kind that keeps you tossing and turning at night. Please don’t hear me this as a brag on me, because I’m boasting in the grace of God: I slept like a baby last night.

Because I’ve got a stellar pillow.

When It’s Hard To Sleep

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. Psalm 31:9

The events of the week could have made it hard to sleep. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

What happened this week marks not months but years of prayers answered with Not yet, if not No. That answer, this waiting, these events could make it hard for a mom to sleep.

At least, without the right pillow.

But too many nights tossing and turning on too-soft and too-firm foreign pillows have taught me. When I travel, I take my pillow. The extra space it takes to bring my just-right pillow is well worth it.

That pillow helps me sleep in all sorts of strange beds and new places.

Providence Is A Soft Pillow

I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. Psalm 4:8

But when I put my head on that pillow and catastrophic, hopeless thoughts still swirl, I need another pillow. Because uncertainty should not be the occasion of panic. Alistair Begg says, The only thing you can put your head on is the providence of God. Then you go to sleep.

Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads.
Quoted by C.H. Spurgeon

The Puritans said, “Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads.” And some of us are terribly anxious about the uncertainty we face. We are not trusting our unknown futures to a known God who knows the future. And we are not alone.

Begg confides,

Most of the occasions of my worrying, most of the occasions of my rising fears can be traced ultimately to a loss of confidence in the doctrine of providence—can be traced to the fact that I am prepared to say, “My times are in your hands,” but I’m not prepared to live in the light of that truth.

Joyfully pressing on means living in light of that truth. It means that even though I have no idea how this today’s event will unfold and if the heart will untwist, I will trust. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

Because I sleep on the soft pillow of providence.

My Times Are In Your Hands

But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand… Psalm 31:14-15a

My old theology text books defines providence as the “continued exercise of [God’s] divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all of His creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end.”

Unpacked: Providence means God is guiding all the events of the world including those in your life. In other words, your times are in his hands.

Some of you know I’m working on a book about meekness. Here’s a little secret: The meek know how to sleep. They have a heightened sense of God’s providence. They carry this pillow everywhere. On it they rest their heads.

And as they doze off, you might hear them pray, “My times are in your hand.”

Asleep in the Storm Like Jesus

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the back of the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. Mark 4:37-38a

As I was writing this, it hit me. Jesus had a pillow too. His head was on it that evening he slept in the stern of the boat on the stormy sea. But his disciples then, like his disciples now, had trust issues. They got anxious.

Remember what they did? They woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?”

For Jesus, Mark tells us, was in the back of the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. Yes, a pillow. The very same pillow, in fact, that you and I can sleep on—the soft pillow of providence. The pillow that helps me sleep in the midst of the storms in my home is the same pillow that Jesus lay his head on in the storm-tossed boat.

Into Your Hand

Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God. Psalm 31:5

How do I know? Well, it goes back to Psalm 31. A few verses before David prayed, My time are in your hand, he prayed:

Into your hand I commit my spirit.

I doubt Jesus prayed that on the boat. But great David’s greater Son did pray it in the most stressful of all times, ever.

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour,while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.
Luke 23:44-46, ESV

Ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries; the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it, John Calvin said.

I did not sleep well this week because I know how this chapter ends. I only slept well because of my pillow.

Because I trust my loving Father knows best.

On Comparing, Scarcity & Working Your Little Territory

Posted on January 19, 2021January 20, 2021 by abigail

Cut comma, delete clause, better word. First impression! No typos on this one, Abigail. Big breath. Triple check.

Read it out loud. Read it again.

Breathe. Post.

Scarcity

Is it wrong to want more influence? Is it bad to try to build your tribe? And is it sinful to want more opportunity to make a bigger mark for God?

It all depends.

It depends first of all if you’re being, what Paul David Tripp calls, a glory thief. If you’re craving the credit for what only God could create, or wanting your tribe to dote on you and hang on your words rather than worship God, you are a glory thief.

But there’s this other piece I’m learning. S L O W L Y learning. I am learning that while it isn’t wrong to approach Mom’s apple from a position of scarcity—because there are a limited number of pieces— it is both irrational and wrong to approach ministry and writing this way.

Because there is plenty of ground to go around.

Comparing

On Friday, I wrote the big **Intro Post** to the Hope*Writers group I joined four months ago. Four months of build up to make the perfect first impression that could connect me to the “right people” and help launch the MORE MEEK book before long. That’s what the deleting and cutting and breathing and re-reading were all about before I hit post.

Saturday evening I looked back at the post, back at the group. I looked back like Lot’s wife and I started comparing. Not only the meager likes and tepid welcomes on my intro post with the massive likes and red hot welcomes on Amy’s intro post, but my life with her life.

There, I said it. The Green-Eyed Monster still isn’t dead in me.

You see, Amy was working for the campus organization that I almost joined 20 years ago. She is doing what I love do as her job. Plus Amy has a real book published by a real publishing house.

Silent tears kicked off a short-lived, impromptu pity party on Saturday night.

Yes, I know. Ug-ly.

Tend Your Territory

Enter Jonathan Rogers into my ugliness. The words of his post were God sent for me that Saturday night, when I started comparing my writing with hers.

Rogers describes urges his writing readers to switch from a hierarchical orientation to a territorial orientation. A hierarchical orientation is fueled by comparison. Instead of comparing and thinking better than, more than, think of faithfulness tending your land. Because comparison, we know, is the thief of joy.

Writing, like running (and, for that matter, like football) requires discipline and work and a willingness to do hard things when a thousand easier things present themselves. But the goal of all of that work and discipline is to get better, not to get better THAN. Other writers are your allies, not your adversaries…
If you’re a writer, forget about your place in the hierarchy. You don’t have a place in the hierarchy because there is no hierarchy in any meaningful sense. What you have is a territory—a little patch of ground that is yours to cultivate. Your patch of ground is your unique combination of experiences and perspective and voice and loves and longings and community. Tend that patch of ground.
The Draft and the Marathon: Hierarchies and Territories

Please be encouraged. Because we all have a patch of God-given territory. It’s ours to tend. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

So tend your little patch of ground that is uniquely yours. Tend the girlfriends who want to spend time with you. And tend the growing sons who need you even if they don’t want you. Tend the home that needs your gentle stability. Attend to the readers and listeners God sends you.

Tend, tend, tend. Tend them.

Two Prayers: Both/And

Remember the prayer of Jabez? It’s buried in an obscure passage in a rather obscure Old Testament book. The genealogy is humming along, when after forty-four names, the name Jabez breaks in. And in 1 Chronicles 4:10 we read,

Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested.

Jabez prayed for more territory—for me that might look like more people to encourage with God’s Word, more Bible studies, more readers, and maybe, getting that MORE MEEK book in print. What would enlarged territory look like for you?

Pray for it. But remember, too, the words of Psalm 131—that little prayer that King David prayed,

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Both. Pray for an enlarged territory. Pray that your little patch of influence for Christ, please God, would increase.

And. Pray for a calm, contented soul that is not so preoccupied with too great things that it cannot give thanks in everything.

Fellowship With Christ Or (Pity) Party Alone

After a three month build up to that big first impression intro*post, which 5-6 hours of deliberation, I did the deed on Friday. Then came the sore dejection and deflation on Saturday when I compared my post, and my life, with Amy’s.

Then I got to tending. I started the Bible study prep in the Gospel of Matthew for my little Sunday afternoon territory. And as I prepared this little patch of ground that God has entrusted to me, I started to see that even though my envy is ugly, God isn’t afraid of ugly. So neither should we be. Jesus touched the unclean and made them clean. He deals in beauty made from ashes.

It was getting late and I was still straddling the fence. But my choice distilled to this: Do I stay at the party or blow the joint with the meek and humble Jesus? Do I compare or choose fellowship with the man of no reputation? I can’t do both.

Jesus grew up in Nazareth— as in Can anything good come out of Nazareth? — little backwater Nazareth. There was nothing in his appearance that would attract us to him. Not to mention that his own family thought he was crazy. Oh, sure, he didn’t feel the exact same deflation I felt at Facebook post. But in Hebrews it says, He was tempted in every way as we are but was without sin.

He knows. Which means he can sympathize with the likes of you and me.

All Glory Be To Christ

That was Saturday night. Then came Sunday morn.

God wasn’t done speaking to me about envy and legacy. He speaks through his Word. Sometimes his Word is expressed through man’s lips or song lyrics that remind us of God’s truth.

And it just so happened that on the first Sunday of the new year we sang a song that starts like this, and this pity-party throwing, would-be glory thief was all undone.

In the best of ways.

Should nothing of our efforts stand
No legacy survive
Unless the Lord does raise the house
In vain its builders strive
To you who boast tomorrow’s gain
Tell me what is your life
A mist that vanishes at dawn
All glory be to Christ

All Glory Be To Christ

“I Think it’s a Loop,” & 4 More Sage Summer Travel Tips

Posted on June 29, 2018June 29, 2018 by abigail

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered;

an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”

G.K. Chesterton

Our nine-day. “Out West” adventure ended last week. Some of you have asked for highlights. There were many. Here are five.

1. Beware of “I think it’s a loop.”

Our hiking party on the descent, once we knew it was NOT a loop.

“Wow! This trail is pretty steep,” my niece exclaimed, a minute or two up the trail to Weeping Rock in Utah’s Zion National Park.

“I think it’s a loop,” I assured her as we rounded- or more accurately, as we turned sharply to the left. “The sign said the trail to Weeping Rock is only four-tenths of a mile. That’s nothing- a ten minute walk, maybe.”

“Well, anyway, it’s a good thing we filled our bladders at the last stop,” one cousin added, between swigs from his Camelbak, “because this trail is making me thirsty.”

“Yup- out of one bladder right into the other,” another cousin quipped.

We with any breath left chuckled. But our bladder banter betrayed us.

Because none of us was an actual-factual hiker. I mean the kind who does this sort of switchback, steep drop off stuff. A real hiker. Our knock-off Camelbaks had arrived mere days ago.

Not all those who wander are lost.

Still, here we all were- wandering up Zion National Park’s family-friendly, rated-easy trail to Weeping Rock.

“You sure this is the way to Weeping Rock?” my husband asked me, about ten minutes in.

“I don’t know if it is or is not,” Uncle John jumped in, “but I’m already crying.”

“I think it’s a loop,” I said again.

And we trudged on.

Someone mumbled something about a trail of tears.

Then, where the trail was so narrow and the drop-off so sheer and my niece’s hand numb for how hard I was holding her- where we were hugging the rock- there came two hikers going down.

“Hello!” I burst, “Can you tell us if we’re on the path to Weeping Rock?”

That bearded trekker grimaced first, then without a word, he grinned and turned. Our eyes tracked as he pointed down to a dark, little cave way off at the base of the cliff.

“That is Weeping Rock,” he said.

Tolkien was right, of course: Not all those who wander are lost.

But this I know- those who slog along switchbacks seeking the easy, “family friendly,” route to Weeping Rock are. They are lost.

We followed the bearded man down.

2. Listen to the rocks cry out.

The second highlight of the trip for me was listening to all those majestic rocks. All the earth will shout his praise.

I heard the Grand Canyon sing praise- louder and louder as the day wore on and the sun colored those west faces magnificent.

And the Vermillion Cliffs chanted too, driving into southwestern Utah. By the time we reached Zion, I tell you, the Patriarchs were tenors, belting out glory, Pavarotti. style.

“All the earth will worship You and sing praise to You. They will sing praise to Your name.” Selah Psalm 66:4

Displaying Ab n S n G GC.jpg — Bright Angel Trail, photo tweaks courtesy of David Haessig

I’ve written be fore about the glory of God in Creation, and how sunsets and canyons and mountains and rivers exist for Christ.

I can’t help but share this John Piper quote again:

Every honorable pleasure we have in the created world is designed by God to give us a faint taste of heaven and make us hunger for Christ. Every partial satisfaction in this life points to the perfect satisfaction in Jesus who made the world.

Creation talks– it sings and shouts- and we hear Creator God.

3. Road trip with friends (and bring your walkie-talkies).

For a full 24 hours after we got home my ears were ringing. I kept hearing “Roger” and “10-4” and “Breaker, breaker.”

I miss hearing the happy back and forth between the brothers-in-law, the “Hey’dja see those longhorn over there?” and “Woudnt’cha just like to see one of those boulders come rolling down?” and ” What song can you sing us, Big John?”

This trip we traveled with my in-laws and now I don’t ever want to road-trip alone. Joy shared is joy doubled.

Switching up the cousins each leg of the trip worked like a charm to ease any conflict and breathe fresh fun into those 4,000 miles.

And, trust me, it really helps when you’re eating leftovers out of the trunk for the fourth meal in a row in the parking lot of Wall Drug to have a unified front before a half dozen kids with their hearts set on Culver’s.

Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity…It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Psalm 133:1, 3

4. A joyful heart is good medicine.

Joy is the serious business of heaven, I’ve heard.

But on earth, it seems it comes to us indirectly- not when we aim at it head on. At least that’s how it was out West.

At Weeping Rock. Looking out. — Zion’s Weeping Rock, Takes 1-10

Laughter comes at the strangest times.

Like, when after 14 hours on the road, our hotel landed on Pancake Boulevard. For some reason, we laughed until we cried.

Or when Curious George-like, my nine-year old niece snagged what she thought was her dad’s lost hat at a bus stop at Hopi Point. She was on her cheery way running it to him, when the hat’s frantic owner came crying after,

“Hey, little girl! That’s my hat!”

Or when we made it to Mt. Rushmore at twilight and raced up the Avenue of Flags to catch a glimpse. We’d read the stone faces would light up pronto! at 9. So up we dashed- cameras in hand and poised at 8:59, ready for the lights to shine.

And we waited and watched. The four faces grew grayer and grayer. We heard singing and a poetic reading and a full-out, complete with flag-lowering, patriotic show.

And while we were lost in wonder- or wondering- the lights flashed on.

Our cameras were in pockets. And we laughed.

Or when we finally reached Weeping Rock and I marched up to a real professional-looking, photographer-man and asked if he’d take our picture and after 10 minutes and lots of contrast here and back-fill there, that crazy silhouette shot was the best we got.

And we laughed and we laughed and we laughed. We rejoiced greatly, we sons and daughters of Zion!

5. Rocky Mountain highs lead to low sea level lows.

At the high points of our trip, and we probably averaged about 7,000 feet about sea level, a couple of quotes would rumble around in my head. my head. They’re the lines bolded below, from “The Place of Exaltation,” by Oswald Chambers.

We have all experienced times of exaltation on the mountain, when we have seen things from God’s perspective and have wanted to stay there. But God will never allow us to stay there. The true test of our spiritual life is in exhibiting the power to descend from the mountain…

We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life— those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength.”

Monday morning came around and heaps of laundry and lost library books and, no joke, a flat tire too. After 9 days in the sun, for our first five days back on the plain it rained. Rain boots on the ground and bills to pay and a lawn to mow. We were made for the valley.

The test of our spiritual life is not in going up the mountain or vacationing with gratitude and laughs. Those are easy.

The true test is in descending the mountain with grace.

Walk About Zion

Walking about Zion. tweaks by David Haessig

We walked about Zion. And hiked at Grand Canyon and stood in waist deep Oregon Trail wheel ruts. We bathed in Glenwood Spring’s giant hot pool and sat on a huge petrified rock called Old Faithful and looked straight into the granite faces of America’s greatest. We enjoyed every rock, every trail, every stop.

God gets glory when we enjoy his gifts, as his gifts. I’ve written before about how we ought to look up the sunbeam and chase back to the source. How we ought to “enjoy everything in God and God in everything” and receive vacations like this as avenues to enjoy the never-shifting Giver of all good gifts.

Our western adventure was prime-time for that. For putting this worldling in her place.

The rocks restored my awe of the Creator. The rocks and rivers and cliffs and canyons shook me up. They reminded me that I- and the rocks and rivers and cliffs and canyons- all exist for God.

We need these gracious reminders.

Because, if you’re like me, you get into a groove- or a rut- and get too comfy in our bubbles. But then something shakes us and wakes us up to reality. He is God. We are dust. He is a Rock eternal. We are a disappearing mist. He gives living water.

If we are Zion’s children, we are more than dust and mist. If we dwell in Zion, in Him, we are as unshakeable as God is.

Solid Joys and Lasting Treasure

This week I heard an old preacher quote the last verse of an old hymn called, “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken,”

Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show:
Solid joys and lasting treasure,
None but Zion’s children know.

Solid joys and lasting treasure are for Zion’s children. They were, and they are, ours.

So walk about Zion, go around her. But beware when you’re scaling a cliff switchback-style and your guide says, “I think it’s a loop.”

Especially when you think you’re on the way to Weeping Rock.

Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels,

that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever.

He will guide us forever.

Psalm 48:12-14

Hands Lifted High?

Posted on June 27, 2015 by abigail

Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you. Psalm 88:9

A twelve-year old friend joined me Saturday for a night of worship. An hour in, Ally leaned over in the pew and whispered,

Should I lift my hands, too?

Great question, Ally.

How would you have answered Ally? Do you lift your hands in worship? Should you?

No Gift More Urgent

I stretch our my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Answer me quickly, O LORD! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Psalm 143:6-7

June is my Psalms month.

Bible read-throughs always land me here mid-year. Their a staple year round, but in June I bathe in them. I read a handful when I rise. Sarah McCracken’s soul-folk and Sons of Korah’s acoustic-emotive versions of them, and Wendell Kimbrough‘s celtic remix fills my playlist by day.

When the sun sets, I rendezvous with Lewis’ Reflections on the Psalms. This bit is from the chapter called “The Fair Beauty of the Lord.”

The old poets do not seem to think they are meritorious or pious for having such [appetites for God] nor, on the other hand, that they are privileged in being given the grace to have them…It has all the cheerful spontaneity of a natural, even a physical, desire. It is gay and jocund. They are glad and rejoice (9:2). Their fingers itch for the harp (43:4), for the lute and the harp-wake up, lute and harp!-(57:9); let’s have a song, bring the tambourine, bring the “merry harp with the lute,” we’re going to sing merrily and make a cheerful noise (81:1-2). Noise, you may well say. Mere music is not enough. Let everyone…clap their hands. (47:1). Let us have clashing cymbals, not only well tuned, but loud, and dances too (150:5).

There in the Psalms, I find an experience fully God-centered, asking God no gift more urgently than his presence, the gift of Himself, joyous to the highest degree, and unmistakably real. What I see (so to speak) in the faces of these old poets tells me more about the God whom they and we adore. (Reflections on the Psalms, pp. 157-158)

Those who look to the Lord are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame. And David danced before the LORD with all his might. But we get stuck in ourselves. Self-awareness hinders.

Our Struggle With Self-Awareness

Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Christ, turn to Him at once and ask Him to establish rest. Take every element of disintegration as something to wrestle against, and not to suffer. Say, “Lord, prove Thy consciousness in me,” and self-consciousness will go and he will be all in all. -Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, 8/20

A few days that night of worship, I ran across this panel discussion. It was recorded at the 2008 Desiring God National Conference. Words and worship were the focus.

Bob Kauflin, songwriter and producer at Sovereign Grace Music answered this one:

Bob, do you want to follow up on that at all with regard to the aspect of using your body in worship? Lots of people find the idea of raising their hands when they’re singing to be very uncomfortable. I think we touched on that briefly, but do you want to say anything more about that?

Kauflin: I think we begin with what God desires and how God desires to be praised and what pleases him. I was having a conversation with Mark Dever, the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Mark is not the most physically expressive guy in corporate worship, and yet he is a man of God, theologically brilliant, loves the gospel, loves the church.

I said, “Mark, what about this? What if I were to ask you, ‘If there is any physical action in Scripture that God says pleases him – raising hands, kneeling, dancing, bowing – that you’ve never done, wouldn’t it be a good question to ask why not?’” He said, “Yeah, that’s a good question.”

I think many of us struggle with this self-awareness as though everybody in the room is really looking at us. It’s crazy. But that’s the human heart. That’s the desire for our own glory and our own praise. I think it’s good just to acknowledge it as sin and confess it and say, “Well, Jesus, that’s why you died. You died because I love my own glory. Even now I’m supposed to be praising you. All I can think about is if anybody’s looking at me, and I can’t shake it. Thank you for dying for this sin.”

Then I think of “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection” by Thomas Chalmers, the idea of directing your love somewhere else rather than to yourself. The thing that’s been most helpful for me is just to think about the words we’re singing…When I am thinking about how great the Savior is and what he did for me and how glorious God the Father is and how the Father has sent his Spirit through the Son to live in me, I just have to respond some way… It’s often just lifting my hands, saying, “Thank you” or “I need you.”

My third thought is I want to do with my body whatever makes Jesus Christ look glorious. If people observe me, I want them to be able to say he knows a great Savior — not an okay Savior, not an average Savior, not a Savior that you can kind of take or leave. I want them to be able to tell from my countenance. Psalm 34:5: “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.” I want them to know from my body that this is what I was created for — to bring him glory.

What can people tell about your God from the way you worship Him? Does He look glorious? Do you raise your hands? Should you?

* * * * *

Jesus told the Samaritan woman that the Father is seeking true worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24).

The Puritans can teach us a lot on how to worship this way- with heart and mind, in spirit and truth. They knew that the Spirit moves in step with the word and so their worship wasn’t haphazard. I don’t know if they raised their hands or not.

But I do know that they prepared for public worship. During the week, in private and in family circles, they fixed their minds on God’s glorious truths. Then Sunday, they sang in the assembly. They worshiped. They adored their Lord and pitched all affections on him.

That is why, 350 years ago Puritan Stephen Charnock could describe worship this way, as,

An act of the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thoughts of his majesty…It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul adores and reverences his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness, embraces his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object, and pitches all his affections upon him. (Works, I, 298)

However that looks.

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.

Psalm 63:3-4

If you struggle with self-awareness, this Tim Hawkin’s sketch may or may not be for you. If you do watch it, you’ll at least learn some proper terms.