A few years ago I took up woodworking as a hobby. I started with fish carved out of scrap wood, then sharks from driftwood, and eventually Polynesian-style tikis out of discarded palm trees.

And somewhere along the way I noticed something funny happening while I worked on the tikis. As I carved out the eyes, I would find myself thinking: now you have eyes — but you can't see. As I shaped the mouth: now you have a mouth — but you can't speak. 

I was, without meaning to, narrating Psalm 115 to a piece of wood.

"They have mouths but do not speak. They have eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear.”

Obviously, I was not making the tiki to worship it. But as I reflected on it, I thought, you know there would have to be some comfort in having something to grab hold of in difficult times. Even the act of carving it, making it, was a way of trying to gain some measure of control over a life that often feels completely out of control.

I don’t know about you, but I can certainly identify with that need; that desire to have some measure of control. 

We all have our versions of this. The things we construct to manage our anxiety — our routines, our contingency plans, our carefully maintained illusion that we are in charge of how things turn out. They're not the wooden idols of old. But they serve a similar purpose.

The psalm doesn't mock that impulse. It simply reminds us that if we trust only what we can make or control, we have limited ourselves to the possibilities of our own making. And we were made for something larger than that.

Prayer: Gracious God, we confess how much energy we spend trying to stay in control — building our own small securities. Loosen our grip today. Remind us that we are held by hands far steadier than our own. Amen.

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