Lessons Learned

Psalm 130 is comforting, consoling and didactic. It lets me know that God holds me while I sin and break His rules, asks me to be patient while He showers me with mercy, redemption grace, and love while I am working through forgiveness. I rejoice that there is nothing incomplete about God. His love is unfailing and His salvation is all inclusive, covering my past, present and future. What an amazing God! He is all I need! The songs that come to mind for me as I learn this lesson are "Amazing Grace" and "Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord".

My lesson learned is that I because of God's fullness I cannot serve Him half way or use just part of Him. I need all of Him all of the time and He wants me all of the time. So I ask Him to make and mold me. Turn me inside out so that I develop my mind, soul, heart and spirit to be more like His. Let me be one whose hope in You and gratitude for Your mercy inspire me to fervent praise and unremitting obedience.

by Nelda Hobbs

Psalm 130 -- “O Lord, hear my voice . . . in his word I put my hope.”

A few weekends ago, our grandson, Jackson and I, headed down to the Museum of Science and Industry and its Omnimax Theater to see the Hubble Space Telescope movie. Film from the telescope showed a vastness to the heavens, a depth to an ever-growing universe, so beautiful, yet distant beyond imagination. And I thought to myself, the more we know about our expanding universe, the smaller we humans become. These verses reveal something even more extraordinary. Our Lord, the Creator of the magnificent universe, has his ear attuned to the desperate cries of his people, who are as minute as the dust. Yet he knows us and hears us and counts us significant enough in his great cosmic order to be intimately concerned with our troubles. Even more, despite our repeated failings, our faltering steps, our pathetic sins he extends his forgiveness and bathes us in lavish love. It is beyond our comprehension, understood only by the organ of faith. Yet it is our hope, constantly affirmed in the scriptures, repeatedly affirmed in our lives, and ultimately confirmed on the Cross, that he redeems us. Praise be to our Lord!

Terry Halliday

Out of the Deep….

In the second movement of his Requiem, John Rutter captures Psalm 130 perfectly (in my opinion). In the beginning, you can feel the despair in the cello and the voices. The low pitches, the dissonant chords, the conflicting harmonies all bring together the desperation of being so far from God. Yet, as the Psalm recognizes that God is forgiving and the psalmist places his hope in God, the spirit of the music lightens, the notes are more pleasantly harmonious and pace quickens. Rutter brings us back to reality, though, and ends the piece back in the depths asking God to hear us.

Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord:

Lord, hear my voice.

O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint.

If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss O Lord, who may abide it?

For there is mercy with thee therefore shalt thou be feared.

I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for him in his word is my trust.

My soil fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch,

I say, before the morning watch.

O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy

and with him is plenteous redemption.

And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins.

by Matt McLeod

Psalm 130 - “A Testimony of Trust In The Lord”

This psalm starts with a sad expression of despair. According to my NIV Bible, “depths” means as if caught up in rising flood waters. In verse 2, “Let your ears be attentive”, certainly implies a degree of urgency.

The 3^rd and 4^th verses are encouraging for me. It reinforces that we are not alone and that we all sin. As humans we are flawed at birth and our weaknesses cause us to sin. It reminds us that none of us could stand from the weight of our sins but not for GOD’s forgiveness. We therefore can trust in GOD’s forgiveness.

Verses 5 and 6 state trust and patience. The night watchman reference is great. Night limits your vision. The watchman is alone and can’t see the evil that he knows is around him. He waits for the light of dawn, when evil shrinks back into the night, when he can see, not be alone, and out of danger. The night represents our sin and the light of the morning, the coming of forgiveness. I think this foretells the coming of the light, the Christ. Christ’s sacrifice and GOD’s ultimate act of forgiveness.

Verses 7 and 8 reminds us that GOD has his own timetable but not to worry because GOD’s forgiveness is never in doubt. His love is, “unfailing”. It finishes by prophesizing that GOD will redeem Israel from their sins. A prophesy that will be fulfilled through Christ.

This psalm sure started on a low note but just kept building to a strong positive ending. A verse in one of the hymns, sung in Church on Sunday, was, “we gain strength while we wait upon the Lord”. While singing it I thought of this psalm.

PRAISE THE LORD!

by Peter Steffen

Psalm 130 - Waiting and Hoping

Like the writer of this psalm, I begin many of my prayers with cries for the Lord to hear me---cries for mercy--- then move on to the realization that I am unworthy to be heard by God Almighty (“If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?”). It’s a bleak picture: the psalmist’s situation is bleak (“out of the depths I cry to you”), and his knowledge of the Lord’s holiness causes him to realize that there is no reason why the Lord of the universe should listen to his cries.

And then comes the “but.” “But with you there is forgiveness.” The psalm turns on this verse and you can almost see hope and relief wash over the writer. He shifts from praying to the Lord to speaking to a third party---or perhaps himself---and then to Israel, encouraging patience and hope.

In verse 6 the psalmist uses an interesting analogy to describe his waiting: “more than watchmen wait for the morning.” So I ask myself, “How do watchmen wait for the morning?” Never having been a watchman, it’s hard to say for sure, but I have spent sleepless nights worrying about the welfare of my children or my aging parents, or trying to sort out an intractable problem. One thing I know is that watchmen wait eagerly---they can hardly wait for the long night-shift to be finished. It’s sometimes hard to be patient while waiting. The second thing is that watchmen wait with certainty. They don’t stand around saying “I wonder if we’ll have to wait forever.” Of course not! There is no question in their minds that the sun will come up and their waiting will be finished.

And that’s the hope the psalmist gives Israel, and us---the certainty that the Lord loves us and that however bleak our circumstance, we will not wait forever for redemption. Hallelujah!

by Sally Ivaska

So Much More Than One Soul Suffering

by Dave Rutherford, Board of Deacons

Psalm 102

This is the first time I have read Psalm 102, so I don’t have years of study and reflection to draw upon — I can only share some first impressions.

The first thing that struck me is that, after the first 11 verses describing in grim detail his physical and emotional afflictions, the writer does not then ask God for relief for himself. He does not ask God to heal him or to comfort him or to deliver him from his tormentors. He moves right into a prayer for the Jewish people, asking for God to look with favor upon them and to rebuild Zion. He reaches past his own despair, perhaps viewing his personal suffering as not personal to him at all, but part of a broader plight being endured by the whole Jewish people. It’s not about him.

The second thing that struck me is the enormity of his prayer. He doesn’t just ask God to respond to the suffering of the Jews and rebuild Zion because they love its stones. He asks God to preserve a written record of the writer’s prayer and his description of God’s infinite power and timelessness, so that a people that doesn’t even exist yet may read it and be moved to praise God. It’s not about Zion, either. It’s about God.

It appears God answered his prayer.

Have I Failed God?

by Jacki Glew, Board of Deacons

Psalm 102

Have you ever felt like a failure? Ever felt like you weren’t good enough? We all have had those times. Maybe you’ve failed a test, failed to win, failed someone you love, failed at a job, failed at a marriage, failed to keep your home, failed someone’s trust… We’ve all failed. None of us is perfect. And maybe then we think, Have I failed God?

Psalm 102 is written by someone who is crying out to God when he failed miserably. Any of us can remember a sad, heart-breaking moment in our lives, and could put ourselves in the same shoes as this psalm’s author. Isn’t it often at times when we are farthest down that we rely most on God and call out to Him for help?

¹ “Hear my prayer, LORD;
let my cry for help come to You.
² Do not hide Your face from me
when I am in distress.
Turn Your ear to me;
when I call, answer me quickly.”

We may fail at things in life, but God never fails us. He loves us too much to do that. He watches over us every single moment of our lives, and wants the best for us even though our tough times may seem like the worst that can happen. God allows failures in our lives to teach us lessons and to show us how strong we can be. And at the same time, we realize how weak we are without Him.

¹⁹ “The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high,
from heaven He viewed the earth,
²⁰ to hear the groans of the prisoners
and release those condemned to death.”

Think about how hard you would try to reach out and grab a lifeline if you were drowning. If death were staring you in the face, as it is for the author of this psalm, wouldn’t you do anything to stay alive?

Guess what? God has thrown you a lifeline. We are all condemned to die unless we grab it. Ironically, we can be saved because someone else died in our place: Jesus Christ.

But wait… Who’s being condemned to death here? You might be thinking, I’m not a sinner! I haven’t murdered! I haven’t stolen anything! I haven’t committed adultery! I’m a good person! I’m going to heaven, right??

Romans 6:23 says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The price of committing sin is death. Any sin. Tell me a time you haven’t lied. Better yet, tell God. How many times in your life have gone by where you didn’t put God first? That’s certainly not honoring Him.

God is perfect, and eternity with Him requires you to be perfect, too. There is no person on earth who has ever been perfect. Except one: Jesus Christ. Only Jesus could be the perfect sacrifice to stand in our place to die on the cross. He was condemned to die in our place so that when we face God one day, we can put on Christ’s white robe of righteousness, and it will cover all of our sins and God will see us as perfect again.

So, again, I’m going to ask you, Have you failed God?

Have you failed to thank Him for loving you so much that He sent His son Jesus to die in your place?

Have you failed to honor Easter as a holy day honoring Jesus’ sacrifice for us? Are you treating it as some kind of cosmic joke and worshiping a big white bunny with lots of chocolate instead?

Have you failed to recognize that every single one of us is a sinner, and that we deserve God’s wrath, punishment, and death?

Have you failed to remember that Christ overcame death when that gravestone was rolled away and now we can overcome death, too?

Will you pray to God today to ask His forgiveness for going your own way, and ask Him to bring Christ into your life to receive His free gift of eternal life?

Don’t fail Him now.