One morning, as part of my own meditation, I
read all of Psalm105. I didn’t plan to read it; I just happened to read it.
This Psalm essentially asks people to worship and trust in the Lord, because of
what He has done for us.
This Psalm has 45 verses, wherein almost about
600 years of history is captured, from Abraham to Joshua. Isn’t it amazing?
Let’s think a little bit about King David, who writes this Psalm. Can you imagine almost a thousand years separate him from when Abraham lived. It is also almost 350 years after the Israelites went into Canaan. Now consider this, At the time when King David was writing this Psalm, he did not have access to the internet, nor to libraries in the same way that we do today.
There are a couple of things we can conclude
about King David and his context. The first and the most obvious one is this:
King David was a well-read man who had access to all the literature of that
time. Second, there was some sort of thorough way in which history was
recorded. Either it was meticulously passed on through oral tradition or it was
carefully recorded in writing. Third, King David was a poet. His poetry was
deeply reflective. He was able to connect the history of that time to his
context and relate it to God’s faithfulness to His People.
Isn’t it amazing? Despite a 1000 years
separating Abraham and King David, the king was able to connect various
elements of Israel’s history right from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then the
travails of Joseph. Here, he speaks of Joseph’s role in prison and then as a
helper to Pharaoh and it goes on. We then come to the birth of Moses, the
captivity of Israelites in Egypt and how they lived for several years. Then
arrive the plagues, miraculous signs in the plagues and then the journey of the
Israelites across the Red Sea and giving them food through manna. He also
opened the water from the rock, All
these aspects are captured by David in one single Psalm!
What struck me through all of this is the fact that we have a living word. At different levels and at different times, you will see that the mercies of the past and the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all fulfilled. Thus, when we look at our current context, the Psalm 105 can inspire us to recount the faithfulness of our Lord over the past generations. We have an opportunity to connect God's Faithfulness from our ancestors to our present times and Praise our Lord.
The Creation of Adam- Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel
I had the opportunity to take this picture 2018
