|
From the NIV translation of the bible this psalm reads as follows: " May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations, May the peoples praise you , O God: may all the peoples praise you, May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly, and guide the nations of the earth, May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you, Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us, God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him. May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be know upon the earth, your saving power among all nations, Let the peoples praise you, O God: let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity, and guide your nations upon the earth, Let the peoples praise you, let all the peoples praise you, the earth has yielded its increase, God, our God, has blessed us, May God continue to bless us, let all the ends of the earth praise him." This psalm extents the invitation to praise and come into relationship widely, to all the ends of the earth. It asks in beautiful prose that the Lord let his face shine upon us. The prayer is asking for a communal blessing that extends thru the far reaches of the earth, to all the nations both near and far to the psalmist. This psalm speaks of grand vision which would involve monumental graces. We want to pray with God's vision, not against it. Let his grace be upon us, more so, let his grace steady upon us, and shine on us. The grace of the Lord comes with vision, it is not absent of vision. As we come into the Lord's grace, symbolized by " His shining face", we are coming into his vision for us as these graces begin to rest upon us. We do know that the grand vision of this psalm is not a reality. Not everyone knows the ways of the Lord, nor praises him. Some nations relatively do not seek the Lord as even if they know him and seeking his presence does not carry the importance mentioned in the verses of this psalm. This is why additional graces are needed and sought in the prayers of the intercessor. This psalm is an example, of how prayer can go much further in its vision than the current bounds of reality, especially in intercessory prayer. The psalm is seeking upon massive graces, graces for all the nations and all the peoples. Even one individual can within the power of intercessory prayer participate in seeking massive graces for all mankind. John Denver had written a song called, " What one man can do." What one man or woman can do, is pray for the whole world. As an analogy, the massive graces sought in this psalm rivals the massive power of the sun in the natural world. Yet such is the potential power of the great intercessor in prayer in terms of accessing these massive graces. Indeed God may want us to go well past the reality of our presenting circumstances in prayer whether it be for others or even ourselves, and then go into the vision of the Lord's great graces. However the vision seems to us, whether it seems rather distant now, or so close that it is a bit scary in its approach, as the Lord leads us to his vision, we can reach into that vision with the aid and comfort of powerful prayer. Prayer is the power that unleashes the vision. The psalmist who is making these rather astounding requests, must have been facing real limitations. From his little spot in the world, he couldn't have known what the state of affairs was in faraway lands and nations, or even of the existence of people on another side of the globe. As late as the Middle Ages, people thought the world might be flat. At this time, much of the world would have been considered pagan, with no outward belief in God. Yet the psalmist has the audacity to ask that all men know the ways of the Lord, and come to praise him. The approach of this psalmist to the Lord, shows that he wasn't taking total stock into his own inherent limitations in this bold approach to the throne of grace. But he had to have known of the limitations of his circumstances to a degree and his own personal limitations to a degree. Yet his bold approach to the Lord goes well past these limitations into a visionary role of an intercessor. The prayer of the psalm brings him past his limitations and into the vision Elijah, the great prophet, prayed for rain and it didn't rain for 3 years. Yet he had no access to the type of weather reports we have right at our fingertips daily, with satellite surveys of atmospheric conditions. He couldn't have known all that much about the causes and effects of rain in the ways that science has achieved today. He faced real limitations yet went boldly beyond these limitations and got the long standing change of the weather from the Lord as a direct result of his intercessions for the weather. Today, someone might be facing limiting circumstances or even circumstances where they feel a bit frayed at the edges. Every other thing they are trying to do, may have limitations that can be frustrating to contend with. Yet as these limitations do exist in reality, we don't have to contend with them to proceed into some mighty prayers. Those mighty prayers can be said even while the existence of various limitations remain. The limitations might contain aspects of what we all do not know, or what I do not know personally. Yet whatever we cannot achieve by our limited personal strivings, might yet be achieved in the mysterious realm of prayer, where prayers such as the one issued here by this psalmist, is calling upon an almost unlimited grace for others. We need not feign ignorance to our own limitations as we go into prayer, but we can allow for them and still go into prayers seeking the mightiest of graces. An important correlated scripture to this psalm is from 1 Timothy chapter 2 verses 1 to 4 which says, " I urge therefore, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be make for everyone-for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." The ultimate call is to salvation and it is reiterated in Isaiah from Chapter 45 and verse 21 where it says, “ Look unto me ,and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else." There is no division of either the peoples or the nations as far as the calling of the grace of salvation. As this psalm also applies to personal prayer, it seems that the psalm is saying that the Lord is initiating his presence and the sight of his face becomes apparent in a spiritual sense in his blessings shining and showering upon the people or beginning to do so. To say it is the Lord’s face shining upon them is to give full acknowledgment as to the Lord’s presenting grace remaining present. Fully, this is from the Lord's graces. This would be a matter of a directive from the Lord in the manner of grace, coming into your personal presence as vision. . Although we cannot see his face literally, he symbolically shows his face and his directives in the content of his blessings and his personal vision for us as individuals. . He is close enough that his guidance is felt and known as grace. The massive sun is certainly distant from us, we know it is 90 plus million miles away, but we know and feel the massive sun’s presence as it shines upon us and guides us in its powerful rays with often just the right amount of its own gifts and graces. We would certainly be in trouble if the sun was absent or if something shielded its rays from reaching the earth. The sun also reaches in a day all the ends of the earth, the far reaches of our planet come under the presence of the might of the sun and the special graces of nature it contains for life and always will throughout its existence. This psalm is mainly posited in the terms of intercessory prayer, and seems to have be sung or recited collectively, and only in the end after these great intercessions are the more local and personal blessings of the great harvest mentioned where seeing is indeed believing. And there is a certain interdependence that we all feel, in that if certain things go wrong, it affects everybody in its foreboding shadows, I might be humming along personally, but if everything that I am taking for granted is suddenly crumbling about me, then I’m often in as much trouble as anyone else from this. The supply of food for example, is really not home grown by most or in the most part in our cosmopolitan society. We are assuming those who are working on that will have success, but do we ever pray for those who are harvesting the fields? There is a reliance on God's outer graces, the watering of the wells out there is something we often take for granted, but if those wells run dry then what? This psalm is saying also, that is in our better interest that things be under the Lord’s ongoing guidance which is also a matter of ongoing grace, which is not a stationary concept but something that has motion both in our lives and in the wider outer world. I might get up speed on my best run at the beach but I’m not going to outrun the Lord’s guidance and the symbolic shining face of his presence is something that we always have the lead on any plans we might have. . A turn from the Lord's grace is ultimately a turn against are very being in that this grace is leading us rightly. If our backs our turned to the Lord’s shining face, it is us who feel this loss in the same way as even if I turn my back to the warming vestiges of the mighty sun on the cold terrain of the far North and then acutely feel its sudden lack. The keynote aspect of this psalm is its intercessory nature. By the psalmist first speaking of the graciousness of the Lord and then saying, “Let the Lord’s face shine upon us", and then going into intercessions for the nations and people of the whole earth at the time of the psalm, this is saying that those intercessions are part and parcel to the Lord’s face shining upon us or his great graces for us, us now including those who are being interceded for as well as the us present as the person or persons who are actually now reciting the psalm. Therefore the psalmist believes that these prayers in the psalm are powerful and effective intercessory prayers in helping bring the shining presence of the Lord’s power to others absent from the physical place of the psalms recitations as well as to those present to its recitations. This psalm could have been recited for people who were well into the future of time, people who would be around hundreds of years later and of course couldn't have been physically present to the recitation of the psalm as it intervened for them in the future from an earlier time in history. They are therefore participatory agents in the blessings and graciousness of the Lord for others according the logic and order of what this psalm is saying. As far as crafting this psalm into personal prayer for yourself, this psalm shows that the Lord is initiating his presence in the manner of grace and guidance which would involve leading, and may be starting to do something for you personally from the storehouse of his individual graces for you, which also contains vision for you. This could include sovereign graces, as the Lord has given you special graces out of his sovereign love for you, and has gifted you with gifts that may not be the same as others as its rather obvious that we all have somewhat differing capacities in many areas. You can bring into your discussion and prayer to the Lord as to what you think it would be like to go forward into this vision, with these new blessings and accompanying graces, sheltered graces under the wings of the Spirits guidance that may be building on prior gifts already given. You could discuss what having this vision means to you, and what actually going forward into the vision more fully would be like. Maybe it would be like a dream come true, but you can get more specific with this, detailing what it would be like as you may go forward into an initiative of the Lord's vision for your life, which can be communicated in manifold ways according to the good pleasure of the Lord. Watch and pray in wonder as the Lord's vision forms and meets with you. Say it’s a manner of healing and this healing is the vision of the Lord's grace for you now, as he shines his face upon you. You could discuss, how it would be happy for me to be free of this pain, or this nagging physical problem which in some ways has interfered with my life's vision.. Or it would potentially be like this or that and so on. Of course God is close to what is also dear to your heart, as he is closer to you than you are to yourself, but you can go further into the prayers of your heart by speaking of what it is like and can be like for you as you receive the wanted blessing from the Lord. This is exactly what this psalm is doing, it is saying, that then the land will yield its increase, meaning that this is what it will be like as the Lord’s face continues to shine on us. This is a type of enduring grace, that the harvest would be great and it fills into the vision of an abundant harvest. The farming was not only for a day, or a moment, but a season. if someone hopes to have a career, a relationship, or a successful business, the buildup involved is more than a day, more than just a momentary effort. It will tend into a season that finalizes and concludes that yes the land will yield its increase or harvest as we stay within the good graces of the Lord shining upon us. So then we can also meditate on this idea in intercessory prayer. What would it be like, Lord if you calmed the storms of violence and strife in this land and you steadied your good graces upon those whom we are interceding for or on the nearby home front? We can go further than the stated intercession right to the contemplation and discussion of what it would be like in the pleasant specifics of the vision of the very answers we seek both for ourselves personally and for those we intercede for in any area and on any issue, however great and however small. The Lord's vision may differ from what we are thinking in some ways, so we also ask for the Lord's guidance towards his vision as we pray. We go right to the vision when we pray, passing by the limiting circumstances, and proceeding quickly into the vision, as however great and massive it may seem and thereby still not reconciled with our circumstances, we can can still participate in the vision within the call to prayer. Prayer which contains in itself access to the graces of the manifold increase we are seeking.
Related Articles -
Prayer, meditation,
|
