The Lord Is My Chosen Portion and My Cup

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
   you hold my lot…
You show me the path of life.
    In your presence there is fullness of joy;
    in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
(Psalm 16:5,11, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

In the days since the U.S. presidential election, Friends have been comforting each other by sharing a quote from the 17th-century Quaker Edward Burrough:

“…we are not for Names, nor Men, nor Titles of Government, nor are we for this Party, nor against the other, because of its Name and Pretence; but we are for Justice and Mercy, and Truth and Peace, and true Freedom, that these may be exalted in our Nation; and that Goodness, Righteousness, Meekness, Temperance, Peace and Unity with God, and one with another, that these things may abound.”

Burrough continues from there, and I actually like the line that immediately follows: “such a Government are we seeking and waiting for, wherein Truth and Righteousness, Mercy and Justice, Unity and Love, and all the Fruits of Holiness may abound; and the contrary be removed, cast out, and limitted (sic).”

Even before the election, I feared we would have a long wait for that government.

I haven’t lost all optimism in the days since, but my hope has certainly taken a beating. Maybe yours has, too.

I felt some renewal after finding the source of that quote, a pamphlet Burrough published in 1659 called “To the Present Distracted and Broken Nation of England, and to All Her Inhabitants.” Burrough preached at the tail end of the English Revolution—a time when, as you can see from his opening lines, chaos ruled the day:

“Oh! poor distressed Nation, and full of Troubles; How art thou broken and divided? How hath Divisions and Distractions compassed thee about, and entred (sic) into thy Bowels? And how are thy Inhabitants and thy People divided, even to hatred one against another? … And how is the Wisdom of thy Wise men turned into Folly, and their Union into present Contention? and how do they seek the Overthrow one of another? and how do they lie in wait to be avenged one against another?”

I confess: That actually resonates with my present mood a lot more than the comparative calmness of Burrough’s asserting “we are not for Names.” Maybe you also worry that “this is the Day of thy Trouble, and the beginning of thy Sorrows,” and you have no idea what comes next.

Burrough did have an idea, one informed by his intense Quaker faith.

“Remove thy Iniquities by Repentance,” he advised his readers: Acknowledge your sins, renounce them, and come together to embrace God. If England would do that, he said, “then should thy light break out of obscurity, and the dew of Mercies shall fall upon thee, and it should be unto thee as a Morning without Cloud… [T]he Nation should be happy, and the people blessed, and the Government of Peace and Truth should be established, never to be confounded any more.”

“Wherefore, O Nation, when wilt thou begin to look to the Lord?” Burrough asked. “When wilt thou begin to set up Him, and not man? when wilt thou mind his Power and Presence in and through men, more then any men themselves?”

Burrough had a firmly Christ-centered vision of God and God’s plan for humanity—a vision that doesn’t necessarily appeal to every Quaker today. To take up the Lord as our chosen portion may mean something quite different to us than it did to Burrough and his peers. Looking past any theological differences, however, perhaps we can find common ground in this bit of advice from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Quakers have a great venue in which to do that work by meeting for worship. In a world such as Burrough saw, “groaning under great Oppressions, wounded with the Spirit of Tyranny yet un-cast out,” we can offer beacons of faith and solidarity. We can model the path of life that Spirit has revealed to us, and we can stand prepared to welcome others to join us on that path.

I believe that the next four years will put the testimony of every Quaker to the test—not once or twice, but on an ongoing basis. I pray that I can consistently rise to the occasion. I have faith that I will have Friends encouraging and provoking me—and maybe we’ll manage to take a few small steps toward achieving that government we seek.