Episode Details

Psalm 138: The God Who Bends Low

David begins with an extravagance that sounds almost impolite — "I will praise thee with my whole heart: before the gods will I sing praise unto thee." Not half his heart, not a considered portion, but the whole of it, and in full view of every rival power he can name. There is a boldness here that comes not from confidence in oneself but from having been answered. "In the day when I cried thou answeredst me," he says, and everything else flows from that single remembered rescue. But the line that arrests me is this: "Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly." Here is the essential paradox of the psalms — the Most High who looks down, not with the detached gaze of a monarch surveying his domain, but with the focused attention of someone who has chosen to care. And then the final promise, almost unbearably tender: "The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me." Not what concerns the empire or the cosmos, but what concerns me. Your small, unfinished story is not beneath His notice.

00:00 Wholehearted Praise Before the Gods
01:00 The Lord Will Perfect What Concerns Me