A Song of Ascents

The Psalms are such a rich and diverse book! This week, I was immersed in the “Songs of Ascents”. These are psalms that were sang during the climb to Jerusalem as people were going to the house of the LORD to worship as ordained by God. I imagine them to have been sung in one loud voice irrespective of the type of song, whether a thanksgiving hymn, a celebration, a lament or a reflective song. In any case, it must have been a sight to behold for the stranger and an encouraging and lovely time for those who participated in the ascension. I equate it to the gathering of believers in a pilgrimage or something similar. Such times are always wonderful. Many of the songs of ascents that I meditated on this week had various topics and some were individual while others corporate. However, I found that they had a common thread and that is the LORD is everything. Indeed, in psalms 120-127, you see the LORD as the help, the deliverer, the hope and the sustenance. While each of these songs of ascents are meant for a specific topic, they each reminded me of the unshaken source that our LORD is to us. We may all be going through different challenges or experiences in life but our God, the creator of heaven and earth; the one from whom all blessings flow is able to meet us where we are.

Our God is unlimited and eternal. There is not a topic that is beyond His understanding or beyond His reach. Nothing in this entire universe is above Him, nothing can be hidden from Him, and nothing can be done without His authorization. The earth is His and everything in it (Psalm 24:1). We can come to our heavenly Father with everything that is going on in our lives and He is sure to have a satisfying response to our pleas and requests. There are three points that caught my attention this week: first, the LORD is the source of everything, second, the protection of the LORD is comprehensive and total; and third, the salvation of the LORD brings joy and gives Him glory.

First, the LORD is the source of everything. This is a humbling truth. “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1). This entire psalm puts things in perspective to us who like to be masters of our destiny. If the LORD does not build in advance, your labour is in vain. That means, everything we do flows from what the LORD has already ordained. In fact, the desires in our hearts are often a product of what He has put in there for His glory. We easily think it is the work of our hands, our own efforts or even our own skills that has made us who we are or has brought us where we are today and will bring us where we are going, but this psalm reminds us that God is the author of everything we produce. We are only drawing from Him as the well of our lives. What we have and who we are flow from Him and our lives are extensions of Him. I love this truth about the God we serve because it also goes to show how much of Him, we can emulate in the world and spread His aroma. This is also very liberating because we do not need to always be in the know or come up with new ideas, ours is simply to draw from Him. 

Second, the protection of the LORD is full and comprehensive. Unlike the protection we purchase through our insurance premiums for specific coverages, the LORD’s protection includes all coverages, it does not have an expiration date, and it covers even unforeseen situations or situations that are utterly hopeless. That is why the psalmist is able to call upon the LORD in his distress (Psalm 120:1), when lies are spread about him (Psalm 120:3), when enemies surround him, when there is no more hope for him, when he is in the snare of the fowler (Psalm 124:7), etc. Indeed, there are no situations where the LORD cannot help. Humanly speaking, there are situations that one cannot escape unless the LORD intervenes, that is what we call miracles because no plausible explanation can be given to the rescue of the LORD. When the hand of the LORD is on a thing, you can be sure it will do that which He has purposed for it to do. The reality of our life on earth is that it will be filled with trouble, we will have enemies, we will have difficulties, but we have this assurance that our God is greater than all of our distresses and He comes through when we call on His name.

Third, the salvation of the LORD brings joy and glory to God. There is a way in which the LORD wants to intervene in His children’s lives and although it may tarry and not make sense to us, it is the way that brings the maximum satisfaction, and He gets the glory out of it. When I think about the way the LORD decided to bring reconciliation of men through one man, a sinless one, the son of God and to have him die in the place of sinners so that through the death of this one man, all men could be saved it is simply incredible (Romans 5:12-15). Not only that, this salvation story, the greatest there is has provided many blessings to the recipients: adoption in the family of God as sons, every spiritual blessings in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), cancelled records of debts that stood against them (Colossians 2:14), the Spirit of God living in them, their bodies becoming the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19) to name just a few and in all this the glory of God was evident. God Himself said it when His son asked Him to glorify Himself, saying “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” (John 12:28). I believe part of God’s glorification lies in Him being the author and finisher of what He purposes; it lies in Him doing as He pleases as the God who is in heaven (Psalm 115:3). The only problem is that we are often too impatient and so we seek to “help” God in our situations as if He needed any. Instead of trusting in the all-knowing and all-powerful God, we rely in our own intelligence that does not get us anywhere and instead derail us from the plans of God for our lives and rob God of His glory. Often times, the salvation of the LORD will seem to tarry but as the Bible tells us repeatedly, we should wait on the LORD. In Psalm 126, Israel had waited so much for the salvation of the LORD to the point of disbelief so that when it finally came, they could not believe it, they were like those who dream, it felt too good to be true (Psalm 126:1). Moreover, the joy and laughter that was attached to that salvation was something that could only be experienced. The same is with us, when the LORD saves what ensues is always joy and gladness. In Christ, joy is our portion, and it is eternal.

May we be patient enough to wait for the salvation of the LORD that brings much joy and gives glory to God. May we learn to surrender daily to this great God, and may we be quick to run to Him with everything because He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent for a reason. Amen.