Towards the end of the psalter there is a group of fifteen psalms known as Psalms of Ascent. Tradition tells us that these were songs that the people would sing as they made their pilgrimage from their home to Jerusalem for the three festivals as required by the Mosaic Law.
In my daily quiet time reading I’ve come to this group of songs. (I’ve listed them below with their subjects in case you want to do your own study of them.) The one for today was Psalm 130. It is a prayer of repentance. The psalmist is calling out to God and wants Him to pay attention. He says, “Help, God – the bottom has fallen out of my life!” (v. 1 MSG). He goes on, “Listen hard! Open your ears! Listen to my cries for mercy.” Have you ever felt that way?
Verse 2 reads, “If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that’s why you’re worshipped.” How great is that! Forgiveness is God’s habit. And yet, how often we neglect coming to Him to experience His forgiveness.
This time of year – this Christmas season – we are reminded that Jesus came for that very reason – that He would prepare a way for us to be forgiven and we could enter in to a relationship with Him.
As the psalmist continues, he says, “I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on Him. I have put my hope in His word. I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more that sentries long for the dawn.”
During my time in Viet Nam, I regularly was on guard duty on the perimeter of our compound during the night. After evening mess, we would climb into the back of a truck that would take us to our stations – a dirty, dusty bunker at the edge of our base. Our return to the base would not come until morning. Out that far from the base it was very dark. As the night wore on, I would wait to see the first strains of daylight. The psalmist says, “more than a sentry longs for daylight, he longs for the Lord.” Do you long for the Lord?
Yesterday in church my pastor gave a message from Isaiah 40 – one of my favorite passages. If you listen to Handel’s Messiah during the Christmas season, you’ll hear a version of this sung by the bass soloist.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
“The potholes all filled in,” as the pastor put it! Isn’t that great? What encouragement!
If you read two of these Psalms today, and one each day following, when you’re done it will be Christmas!
Have a Blessed Christmas!
Bill Erickson
Psalm 120: God’s presence during distress
Psalm 121: Joyful praise to the Lord
Psalm 122: Prayer for Jerusalem
Psalm 123: Patience for God’s mercy
Psalm 124: Help comes from the Lord
Psalm 125: Prayer for God’s blessing upon His people
Psalm 126: The Lord has done great things
Psalm 127: God’s blessing on man’s efforts
Psalm 128: Joy for those who follow God’s ways
Psalm 129: A cry for help to the Lord
Psalm 130: A prayer of repentance
Psalm 131: Surrender as a child to the Lord
Psalm 132: God’s sovereign plan for His people
Psalm 133: Praise of brotherly fellowship and unity
Psalm 134: Praise to God in His temple
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