Psalm 48

I was struck yesterday by two phrases in Psalm 48 that caught my attention and got me thinking. The first comes in verse 8:

As we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the Lord Almighty


I'm not really sure what it was that resonated in my heart about these words, but something did. Perhaps it's the sense that we don't see, that we've done a lot of hearing, but we simply don't see. "As we have heard, so we have yet to see" might be our experience and feeling. And yet God is doing things, he continues to be at work and yet we don't see.

I long to see.

The second phrase comes right at the end:


For this God is our God for ever and ever; 
   he will be our guide even to the end.


The God who is described and active in the Bible is the same God we know today. Times may have changed, but our God has not. If he did it then, whatever "it" might be, then surely he is able to do it now!

There was a third thing in this psalm that I noticed and wondered what difference it might make if this were our practice too. In verse 9 it says:

Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.

Notice that the preoccupation in the Temple was not with right doctrine or expression of worship. It wasn't about dotting the i's and crossing t's of our theology. It was about meditating, focussing on the love of God.

Three things worthy of reflection I thought.