Psalm 18:12
the great heist
For thy servant keepeth them, and in keeping them there is a great reward. (Psalm 18:12 DR)
One of the saddest experiences of life is when you earnestly desire something that you either can never have or have to put off until much later. This feeling of disappointment can be more crushing than physical pain; as the Proverbs say: “Hope that is deferred afflicteth the soul: desire when it cometh is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12 DR)
But potentially even worse is when that hope deferred is finally brought to fruition, only to discover that it is not as fulfilling as what one imagined and hoped it to be. Given our fallen world and the fickleness of our hearts, this should perhaps be an expected outcome, but it seems to always take us by surprise. That relationship which blossoms in sweetness and ends in heartache. That career that sucks out one’s soul. That property that one salved to own that falls into disrepair.
The fleeting things of this life cannot satisfy our hearts, because they are made for something much bigger. The gaping chasm that exists in our souls and makes us restless and discontent and miserable is meant for communion with its Creator, a friendship which sin severs and blocks. We craft little idols in its stead, hoping that the homage we pay to them will give us what we so ardently long for.
In this verse the Psalmist follows up on the thought from the previous verse; the law of the Lord is more precious than gold, and thus in this verse he declares that in keeping it there is great reward. The implication here is that this reward is not gold or silver or anything else in this world, but is a reward that comes from friendship with God; otherwise the previous verse would be completely disingenuous.
This reward is thus not a physical good per se, but rather goes far deeper, bringing the soul back into communion with God. This is why the Psalmist can look at creation in its splendor which declares the glory of God, contemplate the sun’s proclamation of God’s reign over creation, and the goodness of His law and see that all else in this world pales in comparison. Gold for him is a proxy for all that the world and its desires hold dear; it is the means to wealth, to fame, to glory, to power. But all of these things, he concludes, are of no account compared to the wonder and beauty of God’s law.
The reward for keeping this law is thus not less than gold or riches, but much greater, with the irony that in keeping God’s law the things of this world that are needed for one’s state are available to be used rightly. Solomon was given the opportunity to ask for whatever he desired, and in humility he asked for wisdom; this request was granted along with all the other things he could have asked for. Our Lord says:
“For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:32-33 DR)
Our call is thus to look for our reward in loving God, which our Lord reminds us, lies in keeping his commandments. (John 14:15) We are not promised riches in this world, but the riches of friendship with God surpass them all. As St. John says:
For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever. (1 John 2:16-17 DR)
This was a pretty fun animation, and I wanted to portray that the reward of the righteous not lying in riches or the things of this world, and how chasing after them is a never-ending quest that ends in nothing.
I started by creating the safe by making a rectangle that was of a certain dimension that would be easy to divide. I precomped it and added a metal-ish texture to it. I then duplicated it in the project panel to make it an independent precomp, made the layers 3D and pushed what would be the back part of the safe back in Z space an amount equal to the width of the sides. I then duplicated that precomp again and rotated it 90 degrees, then pushed it on the horizontal axis half of the width of the front and pushed it back half of the distance to the back in Z space, which aligned it with the two edges of the front and back. I repeated this for the other side. I created a new rectangle that would be the appropriate proportions for the top and bottom and followed a similar procedure to create a 3D cube. I went back and changed up all the textures and finally parented all the precomps to a Null situated in the center to act as a master control.
I created the wheel on the front of the safe and parented it to the front of the safe, pulling it forward a bit in Z space to give a bit of parallax when the safe or opened.
The rest was animating the safe, which was juts a simple rotation on the Y axis as it comes into frame, then the wheel spinning to open the lock, and finally the door opening. I then animated the safe to comes towards the camera until the sides and top went out of frame, and had another version of the safe “behind” the opening door which scaled into frame. This process repeats to create the loop.
I added some text that says “there is great reward” that is probably difficult to see, but I wanted that to be a bit like that, combined with the perpetually empty safe as an allusion to the reward not pertaining to things of this world.
This one took a bit more doing than other .gifs, but I like how it turned out.
Enjoy.
For thy servant keepeth them,
and in keeping them there is a great reward.
(Psalm 18:12 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: