I’m recovering from Covid at the moment - hopefully coming out the other end now - so I’m posting here something that originally appeared as a before-Substack, mostly-church-members email during the pandemic, as part of the Joy in the Journey articles that later morphed into The Waiting Country (you can read about that here).
I’m hoping that those who read it first time around will hardly remember having done so and those for whom it’s new will find something helpful in it.
With his trademark wry humour and punchy insight, Steve Turner wrote a poem about short poems:
Short poems
are fun.
You can see at a glance
whether you
like them
or not.1
Psalm 117 comes and goes so quickly. It’s definitely in the category of ‘short poem’. It’s so easy to pass it by, to accept what it says and to hurry on to the larger pastures of Psalm 118 and then into the sprawling continent that is Psalm 119.
But this psalm says, in compressed form, everything we need to know, everything the rest of scripture opens up to us. You can tell at a glance that it holds your dearest treasure:
Praise the LORD, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD.
(Psalm 117)
It insists, demands, that all nations are called to praise the LORD - that the whole story of the Bible is expansive and not exclusive. That embedded within the story of Israel is a larger story which will, in time, burst its banks and God’s life overflow to the whole world.
This is a song of the most extensive hope and joy. For all peoples. A light has dawned over the whole earth - the sun of righteousness has risen with healing in his wings.
And at the heart of that story - its beating pulse, its pulsating power - is the great love of God. Love that is for us, towards us, tilting the whole life of God in our direction. Love that enters the fray and frees the captives. Layering divine love into all the crevices of the heart and every moment of our lives. Love that will heal nations. Love that finds its fullest expression on a hill just outside Jerusalem, “where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.”
This love was enacted with the truest and most tenacious faithfulness - a commitment to embrace and save, to heal and restore. A pledge that endures for ever. Time and chance and all the malevolence of evil could not dampen the integrity and intent of God to enter time and space, the Son of God becoming the Son of Man that the sons of men might become the children of God (as someone so helpfully put it).
With a few deft words, the psalm lays before us the whole sweep of human history and unveils the central reality of God and his ways. It needs no explanation (so please pardon these words); its beauty is plain for all to see and offered for all to savour.
Which is what we ought to do with it. Lay it before our eyes and enter its lines, in wonder and worship. Its brevity is for our blessing. This is our God, this is his world, these are his ways. And we are his, forever his.
Timeless love! We sing the story,
praise his wonders, tell his worth;
love more fair than heaven's glory,
love more firm than ancient earth!
Tell his faithfulness abroad:
who is like him? Praise the Lord!
By his faithfulness surrounded,
North and South his hand proclaim;
earth and heaven formed and founded,
skies and seas, declare his Name!
Wind and storm obey his word:
who is like him? Praise the Lord!
Truth and righteousness enthrone him,
just and equal are his ways;
more than happy, those who own him,
more than joy, their songs of praise!
Sun and Shield and great Reward:
who is like him? Praise the Lord!
(Timothy Dudley-Smith, 1926-)
Steve Turner, Up To Date, 1983, p.119
Hope you are feeling better soon Richard.
Sorry to hear you are under the weather Richard, get well soon! And thanks again for the weekly posts, I always learn something from them. -Jess