August 5 - Psalm 85

Psalm 85

¹ Lord, you were favorable to your land;
   you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
² You forgave the iniquity of your people;
   you pardoned all their sin.
 ³ You withdrew all your wrath;
   you turned from your hot anger.

⁴ Restore us again, O God of our salvation,
   and put away your indignation towards us.
⁵ Will you be angry with us for ever?
   Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
⁶ Will you not revive us again,
   so that your people may rejoice in you?
⁷ Show us your steadfast love, O Lord,
   and grant us your salvation.

⁸ Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
   for he will speak peace to his people,
   to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
⁹ Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
   that his glory may dwell in our land.

¹⁰ Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
   righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
¹¹ Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
   and righteousness will look down from the sky.
¹² The Lord will give what is good,
   and our land will yield its increase.
¹³ Righteousness will go before him,
   and will make a path for his steps.

I am struck by the movement of this psalm.  It begins with a remembering.  You did these things Lord.  And then it goes from there to something of a prayer. Restore us again, Lord.  Do that again, Lord. 

I remember when our girls were quite young, and I would play airplane with them.  They would hold out their arms and I would pick them up and say something like:  Flight 805 ready for take-off.  I would pick them up and they were the airplane and would fly all over the house. They would come in for a landing, usually on their bed – sometimes it would be filled with turbulence.  Other times a soft landing.  They would say:  “Do it again Daddy!  Do it again!”

The psalm writer longs for God to “do it again.”  To do what God did some other time when things were made well.  “Restore us again, O God of our salvation.”  If that’s not a prayer I hear every day as we continue to make our way through this pandemic. 

Then we get to verse 8.  It seems that some sort of a shift happens here.  Let me hear what God the Lord will speak…God will speak peace to his people.  These verses get very poetic. 

Ø God will speak peace, a sense of completeness and rightness. Something has gone wrong between God and the people. God’s peace will restore things to what they should be.

Ø God’s salvation – rescue, deliverance – is at hand, close by.

Ø God’s glory – gravitas, majesty – will dwell in the land, reminding the people of God’s presence with them.

Ø Steadfast love – freely offered grace and dependable kindness – will “meet” with faithfulness, reliability, trustworthiness.

Ø Kindness and trustworthiness will meet, come together, and perhaps even form a relationship, so that the people can count on God’s love.

Ø In a remarkable word picture, righteousness – what is right and just – will kiss peace, wholeness and soundness.

And then I love the image in verse 11.  Faithfulness will come up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.  And in the middle of the two is you and me.  And we have the image of righteousness preceding God, or coming before God.  Righteousness will clear God’s path and guide God’s steps. 

The picture of life in these verses far exceeds what today would be a clinical definition of life as avoiding death.  Here, life is portrayed as a full, complete, and healthy life lived to the fullest in relationship with God as part of a community of faith.  It is another way of describing peace – the Hebrew word is shalom.

 Shalom is much more than the absence of war or conflict. It is a sense of well-being. That kind of wholeness is centered on a life in the presence of God.

Let us pray:  God of grace, you so loved the world that you gave us your only Son to be our Savior.  Help us rejoice in your redeeming grace by showing mercy and following the way of justice and peace, for the sake of Jesus Christ, redeemer of the world.  Amen.