Psalm 65.

Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion,
and to you shall vows be performed.

God's goodness, as Calvin would say, "constantly affords" new sources of praise for his people. The Psalter translates this opening passage, "Praise waits for you...", and Mr. C, giving his meditation on this Psalm as our congregation's Psalm of the month last week, translated it, "Praise is silent before you...". The very act of giving God praise must sometimes be silenced before his grandeur. "Thank you for..." may be alright when human beings give us things, but when God stoops to give us himself, the phrase used politely to acknowledge a good meal or stocking stuffers pales into triteness and insufficiency.

O you who hears prayer,
to you shall all flesh come.

God reveals himself as the one who hears prayer. This is his name, part of his character, part of his eternal personality. He delights to hear prayer, indeed, as the rest of this Psalm shows, he hears and answers prayer in abundance over and above the requests presented. Reading Heart Aflame this afternoon, I was struck by Calvin's forwardness since he writes that God "must" answer prayer; "to do so would be to deny his nature". Hearing prayer is thus an abiding part of his glory. If I could only believe this, it would give unquenchable confidence. He never lacks the power or knowledge or willingness to respond because of Christ.

When iniquities prevail against me,
you atone for our transgressions.

Christ is the second part of this verse since it is only through him that all flesh can come to God, as the next verse amply demonstrates. It might be wondered how all flesh could come to this holy God thanks to the phrase "When iniquities prevail against me," but then, "you atone for our transgressions". Christ is our access to God. He has already provided for our sins and covered them himself. One matter for awesome praise: God does not leave us to pay for our own sins but delights to pay for them himself, taking on himself the burden of our wrongdoing. That is mercy.

Blessed is the one you choose and bring near,
to dwell in your courts!
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
the holiness of your temple!

Verses 3 and 4 combine the individual and the group in a startling way. The Psalmist says "When iniquities prevail against me" but "you atone for our transgressions", and "Blessed is the one you choose" but "We shall be satisfied...". I've been puzzling about how personally to take the promises, particularly those in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah 40-43. They are made to the Old Testament people of God, yet they are partly fulfilled in the New Testament, and will continue to be fulfilled as Christ saves his people to himself. So how is it that I as an individual can take these promises for myself--these promises for guidance, for blessing, and so forth? Merely an individual, merely part of the group. That, however, does not seem to be the Psalmist's perspective, or God's. Christ prays in John 17 for his people to be one as God as one, that unique Trinitarian unity that still preserves distinction. What God does for the whole, he does for the individual, and vice versa. Each believer as an entity is a microcosm of God's plan and promise, yet each believer is also the means of fulfilling those plans and promises. We see his goodness and faithfulness in our particular lives, but our particular lives fulfill his grand promises way back to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to David.

This is the satisfying goodness of God, the goodness of fellowship with him and with one another, of peace and unity. This is the love and joy he has given us, that we are permitted to partake of his holiness, his greatness and goodness. With such favor upon me, how can I still be afraid and worry so often?

By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness,
O God of our salvation,
the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas;
The one who by his strength established the mountains,
being girded with might....

God replies to our prayers awesomely, perhaps not always as we expect, but always for his glory. His power exercised in righteousness is our hope. His beauty lies in this, this power exercised in gentleness and goodness and in truth. Why is he the hope of the earth?

... who stills the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of the waves,
the tumult of the peoples,
So that those who dwell at the ends of the earth
are in awe at your signs.
You make the going out of the morning
and the evening to shout for joy.

He brings peace. Even before he walked on the Sea of Galilee, God was known as the one who stills uproar, who brings order to chaos, who brings quiet to noisiness, calmness to distress, certainty to confusion. The "tumult of the peoples" is, I think, not only the war between nations, the friction between depraved human beings, but also the chaos within each one of us, the constant clamor of nagging desires all yanking and yowling at each other. He brings peace to our guilty consciences and judges peace to ourselves. He brings certainty to each individual's life, that "living hope" in 1 Peter 1. I love the last two lines of these verses. Like Psalm 84, "Advancing still from strength to strength," each day is joyful before him. I never valued joy and certainty so much as I have begun to over these last months. Knowing that each day, each place, each season is an advance and not a retreat, is part of God's purpose to satisfy me with his goodness, is precious, invaluable.

He is so lovely in his power: he makes each day, even these days on sinful earth with all their pain and sorrow, to shout for joy.

You visit the earth and water it;
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide their grain,
for so you have prepared it.

This is his glory as he answers prayer, his overflowing abundance. The river here reminds me of the River of Life in Revelation and the promise of drinking eternal life with the Savior forever. He has prepared our physical and our spiritual food for us, day by day. This section of the Psalm is richly physical, for God is God of the very practicalities of earthly life--whether it rains or not; whether I have a job or not; whether we are sick or in danger or not. He has prepared each part of it.

You water its furrows abundantly,
setting its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

So beautiful! Rich, rich, rich. Who would have thought of God as having "wagon tracks"? The phrase startled me the first time I read it in the ESV, but there it is, glaring confrontation that I cannot push God out of my life by saying that he only cares about my moral choices and whether or not I have praised him enough today or said the right things in Bible study. He has made the rough-and-tumble details of life, suitcases and laptops and shoes and houses. To say that he doesn't watch over those simple plain details is absolutely foolish unbelief.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.

The end almost seems like overkill. Joy, joy, joy. Overflowing. When Mr. C read this Sabbath morning, the image instantly burst into my mind of the lane just above the McCollums' house, standing between the hawthorn hedges and looking down over the valley toward Coleraine, with the sun through the clouds glancing off long puddles of water shining in green fields. I only wish I could always trust God with the rich entertwined faith of the Psalmist, joining the atonement for sins with the practical provision of crops for each year. To me it seems as though I may be saved, yes, but after that it's sink or swim. God may pay attention to my physical needs, and he may not, but it's up to me to make the right choices and take care of myself. That is simply not God's way. He doesn't leave any corner of the life of his redeemed alone; he delights to meddle in every part of our daily affairs, to answer prayers in stunning and spectacular ways. It is both incredibly terrifying and wonderfully liberating to believe this: that God's joy in the atonement spills over uncontrollably, unquenchably, into every part of the world of his people, not only in special grace to us but in general grace to everyone.

My idea of God's grace has been so narrow, as though grace were a grudging permission toward us--or perhaps more accurately, not as though he were grudging, but rather as though our privileges were very limited, restricted to atonement, the judicial declaration of our righteousness in Christ. Rather I see a happy, gleeful, joyful exuberance, love that flows eagerly into every area and spreads itself through my whole life, into every moment of every believer until we are at last brought into his immediate presence to be satisfied forever. For now that immediacy is too much, and so instead we have the glorious abundance of the natural world as a token of what is to come.

Lord, give me faith to believe and to praise you.