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"Blessed in the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!"

~ Psalm 65:4

 

This week I want to reflect on just one verse of Psalm 65.  Typically, I expound on the psalm as a whole, and there is a wealth of riches that could be drawn out of this psalm too, but my heart is drawn to verse 4 in particular.

My affections are stretched in all manner of direction in reading and rehearsing this verse. 

  • “Blessed is the one…” starts this verse. We are blessed by God Most High, the God of our salvation, the one to whom all praise is due!  There is nothing better than this; nothing can elevate the affections of my soul higher than this truth. 
  • “…you choose and bring near,…” the phrase continues…and I am humbled, sobered in my affections, brought low in the realization that I played no part in this reality of being blessed. It was God and God alone that chose me and brought me and atoned for my transgressions.  I was most poor and needy and wretched; until the God of all the universe placed his love on me and drew me to himself.
  • “…to dwell in your courts!” this phrase concludes…and a holy, reverent fear wells up in the affections of my soul. To the courts of the King?!  Me?!  Like Isaiah the prophet, I feel “undone”; not knowing what to do or say; unsure I can continue to even exist.  What is this privilege to be in the courts of the Sovereign One?
  • “We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,…” the next phrase begins. Satisfaction is the affection my soul is most desiring.  Oh, how I have sought it and chased it in all the wrong places!  But here, in the goodness of the LORD, I find rest and refreshment, recreation and relief, refuge and rejoicing, reconnection and redemption.
  • “…the holiness of your temple!” the verse concludes. Transcendence, purity, glory, radiance, splendor.  Gratitude and worship are my affections now.  I sing and shout in joyous adoration of the only Hope of all who dwell in his creation.  My theology (what I know of God) becomes my doxology (my praise of this God I know).