David sings of how he imagines God arising to defeat his enemies. He asks the righteous to rejoice in God, who rides on the clouds, is a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, gives lonely people families and sings prisoners into freedom. He praises God for leading the Israelites through the wilderness to a promised inheritance.
This part of the long psalm is full of God’s praise, of extolling his power and majesty, of his destroying the wicked, and of his concern for the poor, downtrodden and imprisoned. It contains oblique references to the Ten Commandments, the creation of the ark, and instances of God’s sustaining the Israelites through their long trek across the Sinai wilderness to Canaan. It’s a brilliant summary of God in victorious action, from the highest to the lowest.
In the three stanzas of these ten verses, David uses verbs in four different ways to accomplish this. In the first stanza, he uses the modal auxiliary “may” to express his imaginative hope for God’s action in destroying his enemies and the wicked.
In the second stanza, he initially continues with the modal “may” in verse 3—“may the righteous be glad …”—but then switches to the imperative in verse 4—sing to God, extol him, rejoice before him—, and finishes with the simple present tense in verses 5 and 6 to describe what God always does—is a father to the fatherless, defends widows, sets the lonely in families, and frees prisoners.
In the third stanza, he shifts to the past tense—went, marched, shook, poured, gave, refreshed, settled, provided—to describe a particular, historical set of God’s actions: taking the Israelites through the Sinai wilderness with abundant rain, refreshing them with a promised inheritance.
Grammatically and spiritually, David begins with hope in God, moves to praise, then to God’s character in the eternal present, and concludes with historical proof of God’s goodness.
Question: Do I experience God the way David did?
During Holy Week, our church had a 5 am worship service every day except for Saturday, which was at 6 am. The worship lasted just over an hour and began with praise songs and prayer, followed by Pastor Kim Yang Jay’s video reflection on Jesus’ last week of life in Jerusalem. Then followed a time of prayer for ourselves, our families, our church and our country. During the prayer time many of the congregation went up to the stage to pray and received a Holy Spirit touch from one of the pastors.
My wife and I went every day. On Monday it was hard for me to get up in time to go to the Pangyo church. Very quickly, though, it became easy because I looked forward to the time when I could reflect on my life supported by my fellow believers, guided by Pastor Kim’s reflection, and buoyed up by the Holy Spirit. It was a time of being refreshed with God’s abundant showers (verse 9).
For me, Wooridle church is God’s “holy dwelling” (5) and he set me, who was lonely, in a mokjang family. During Holy Week, I sat in a huge mokjang! He led me out of my prison of pride and selfish desires with glorious singing. I sat for six days in profound gratitude.
I thought of my wilderness journey through my first wife’s death in the US, to rejection by the school I was teaching at and then by the woman who gave birth to our daughter. I lived in isolation for three years in Canada, first teaching at a university as a temporary professor and living in a hostel. God was my companion with his Word and particularly the 23rd Psalm.
When the job ended I lived in the YMCA in Vancouver in the winter, unable to find a job. But every day I found refuge in the church down the street. In his mercy, God sent me to Korea to meet my current wife whose hardship led her to Wooridle. Through her I came too.
Over my 19 years in Wooridle I discovered “God’s weary inheritance” (9). It was weary because it took me so long to see it and accept the inheritance of God’s grace. God kept offering his refreshment, but I kept wanting things to go my way. So I wandered in the world’s wilderness, accumulating suffering and hardship.
In one of her reflections during Holy Week, Pastor Kim said our life is enchant because the suffering from our hardship and mistakes is what led us to Jesus(whithout regret our past). That made me realize the blessing of my wilderness journey. I’m gratefully learning to see God’s abundant rains that punctuated the journey.
Application: To continue to reflect on God’s grace in my wilderness journey and keep a written record.
Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for riding on the clouds and sustaining me in my wilderness. Thank you for taking me out of my prison and giving me the Wooridle family to live with.
