March 26thPsalm 103
He asked for more?
The great Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, once wrote that there are two kinds of Christian spirituality: he called them wintry and summery. Summery spirituality lives in the warm immediacy of God’s presence. It feels God, finds God, sees God everywhere. Joy fills its days. “There’s joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart” – was a song we often sang in Sunday School.
Some Christians feel that joy almost all the time; others (including myself) have seasons of summery joy and other seasons.
By contrast, wintry spirituality lives with more a sense of God’s absence than God’s presence. Paul says we “walk by faith, not by sight”, which means also, “faith not feeling”. Sometimes wintry Christians feel like they are out in a snow storm looking in through the window of a cabin and seeing people gathered around a fire place, all warm, cuddled together, and they wonder why they are on the outside and these others are on the inside. [1]
Now I want to be clear: both these types of Christians have many gifts to offer the church so we should not think less of those whose spirituality looks different than ours.
Psalm 103 certainly expresses a ‘summery spirituality.’ The old hymn advises, ‘Count your many blessings, name them one by one,’ and this psalm does just that. The psalm is an invitation to praise followed by the reasons for praise.
The psalm names “the ever widening circles” of those who are called to praise the Lord: the self (vs. 1 and 2), other individuals (vs. 3-5, though I think the Psalmist is addressing himself here), Israel (vs. 7), those who “fear the Lord,” (vs. 11-13), mortals (vs. 14-16), angels and heavenly hosts (vs. 20-21), and the whole creation (vs.22).
Also, note how the Psalmist uses the word “all” 5 times in the first 6 verses and 4 times in the last 4. And he evokes vast distances with his “earth and heaven” and “east to west” imagery, showing the magnitude of divine graciousness.
It all comes out in a gush. And it is all singularly positive, confident, optimistic, hyperbolic. God is said to forgive all our sins, God heals all our diseases, God delivers us from all pits. God crowns us with all blessings and this happens every morning. Yes, this psalmist is doubtless aware that life can be difficult and that these blessings he is exuding about are not actually evident every new morning. God may deliver us from all perils but the perils can go on a good long while sometimes and surely the psalmist knew at least a few people who did not see any deliverance ever in this life before they died (see Psalm 88).
The closing vision of a cosmic chorus – angels and hosts who do God’s will mingle harmoniously with those who do God’s will on earth (v.18-22). No one and nothing is silent, least of all the psalmist who ends where he begins: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul.’ We join him in praising God for the sovereignty of grace!
In Charles Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, his scathing picture of the horrid conditions orphan children experienced in Victorian England, there is a scene which shows the exact opposite of grace. It is meal time over which a rather fat, well-fed master presides. They boys eat porridge and a little bread. One evening Oliver takes his bowl and dares to ask ‘for more.’ Watch the results below….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tOkpntQtBM
Notes
1 Craig Barnes – Yearning: Living between how it is and how it ought to be.