Psalm 20

When I was a freshman in college, my mother sent me off with a small white teddy-bear wearing an embroidered sweater that says: “PSALM 20.  Love, Mom.”  As I was packing up a bookshelf, I came across him perched in a corner, and my eyes went (well, all right, perhaps pridefully) to my diploma displayed above my desk.  Verses four and five of Psalm 20 say

May He grant you your heart’s desire
And fulfill all your counsel!

We will sing for joy over your victory,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners.
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.

[I’ve always amused myself by imagining a sinister overtone to “We will sing for joy over your victory:” as if I had no choice but to graduate in order for others to be glad about it.  But of course this was not the meaning.]

A footnote in the NASB kindly tells me that counsel might also mean purpose, as in, “May He…fulfill all your purpose.”  It also suggests that the banners may have been ‘the troop standards around which the units rallied.’  I have difficulty envisioning the success or victory of a college graduation meriting this kind of exaltation, or even exultation.  The verses seem rather something that ought to be said about a person’s whole life: This is a someone whose victorious example – whose life’s purpose – others might rally around.  One’s counsel certainly does not end with a bachelor’s, so I’ll hold the gift in trust for later, hoping that in time others might take joy in a life lived with (very) quiet Christlikeness.

An excellent reminder.  But not yet.

So I packed the little bear in a box full of scarves and socks, and a fuzzy brown rabbit from Ireland, and a pair of knitting needles and some CDs and a miscellaneous computer wire.