The Psalms of 120-134 were beautiful. I felt like they were a little bit different than what we are used to reading when it comes to the Psalms.
Specifically, I want to mention things that I read in Psalms 121.
“I life my eyes up to the mountain, from where will my help come? My help is from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth. He does not let your foot stumble. You guard does not slumber.”
The beginning of this Psalm made me reevaluate how I feel about the Psalms, because originally I felt that they were boring and simply said the same things over and over again. However, this part of the Psalms, made me realize that the things the Psalms tell us, and say have more meaning than simply telling us things about past history. Even nowadays, we are told in church whenever we need help or need a way out of a situation that we can’t seem to resolve ourselves to ask the Lord for help and it will come. We’re also told that the Lord doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle. (“He does not let your foot stumble”) and to be honest, when I would hear that I would think, “Yea, okay whatever.” But, after reading this Psalm I honestly believe that it’s true. It says that the Lord helps people when they need it, and he guides their feet in the direction that they need to be headed in.
Psalm 134 to me also meant a lot.
“Life up your hands toward the holy place and bless the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion, He Who makes heaven and earth.”
From this I get that if we allow ourselves to bless the Lord with a presence in our lives, and in our hearts then he will return the blessings from the Mountain of Zion. It all goes back to the saying, “You get out what you put in.” If you put your faith in the Lord, then he will put his faith in you, and help you when you need it, and he will show you the way to your destiny.
I think you make a really good distinction between the previous psalms and the psalms of ascent. I agree with you that there is something about these psalms that is really interesting. I also think you touched on the trust that the hebrew people were putting into the lord nicely. Back when the Psalms were written making a pilgrimage was a dangerous thing. It makes sense that they would trust in the lord to protect them, because they had nobody else.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your feelings about the earlier psalms. I also think that the later psalms had more meaning to me than the droning on of the earlier ones. I think that you did a good job comparing them and talking about the connection you felt.
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