Dave Burke

Well our feeble frame he knows

Psalm 103:13-18

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Praise is therapeutic, however deep the well may be the truth gives us the fuel to worship our Creator. When we praise God something happens, however gradual, in our souls. Rung-by-rung we climb out of the pit.

This is often a difficult process. Henry Francis Lyte put this well in his paraphrase of this Psalm. This is the second verse:

Father-like he tends and spares us,

Well our feeble frame he knows,

In his hands he gently bears us,

Rescues us from all our foes

Praise him, praise him,

Widely as his mercy flows.

I love that line… ‘Well our feeble frame he knows’

A quotation from ‘scripture’ may help at this point:

And the Lord said unto Noah: “Where is the ark which I have commanded thee to build?

And Noah said to the Lord: “Verily, I have had three carpenters off ill. The gopher wood supplier hath let me down - yea, even though the gopher wood hath been on order for nigh upon 12 months. What can I do O Lord?

And God said unto Noah: “I want that ark finished even after 7 days and 7 nights.

And Noah said: “It will be so”.

And it was not so. And the Lord said unto Noah: “What seemeth to be the trouble this time?”

And Noah said unto the Lord: “Mine subcontractor hath gone bankrupt. The pitch, which thou commandest me to put on the outside and the inside of the ark, hath not arrived. The Plumber hath gone on strike. Shem, my son who helpeth me on the ark side of the business, hath formed a boy band with his brothers. Lord, I am undone.”

And the Lord grew angry and said, “What about the animals, the male and female of every sort that I ordered to come unto thee to keep their seed alive upon the face of the earth?”

And Noah said: “They have been delivered unto the wrong address but should arriveth on Friday.”

And the Lord said: “How about the Unicorns, and the fowls of the air by sevens?”

And Noah wrung his hands and wept saying, “Lord. Unicorns are a discontinued line; thou cannot get them for love or money. And fowls of the air are sold only in half dozens. Lord, Lord, Thou knowest how it is.”

And the Lord in His wisdom said, “Noah my son, I knowest. Why else dost thou think I have caused a flood to descend upon the earth?”

He knows, he really does know!

We expect so much from ourselves. The needs of the world and the promises of scripture push us to our limits. In his book, Working with Emotional Intelligence [1] Daniel Goleman quotes research that identifies what he calls the eight major failings of leaders:

• Blind ambition
• Unrealistic goals
• Relentless striving
• Driving others
• Power hungry
• Insatiable need for recognition
• Preoccupation with appearances
• A need to seem perfect

It is a sobering list, and pastors are probably prone to most of them, especially and unrealistic need to seem perfect, or a desperation for recognition. Psalm 103 is therapeutic in this respect. Reflect upon verses 14 to 16, God knows that we are dust, perhaps he is not expecting as much form you as you expect of yourself.

At some point we each need to decide what God wants us to do, and then be satisfied with that task. However much pressure others exert to shift our priorities we stay with the task. However grand and glossy the church down the road becomes, we know we are doing what God wants us to do, it is an antidote to discouragement.

John the Baptist had this latter problem. He had built up a nationwide ministry with hundreds of disciples and influence that went all the way to the top. Then the competition moves in on him – he began to hemorrhage disciples. Like all shrinking religious groups, they began to squabble over pointless issues. It was during one of these arguments that a disconsolate little group of diehards who loved John more than anything came to him and said, “Rabbi, you know that preacher we met on the other side of the Jordan? Well he has started baptizing people now and everyone is going to him instead. What are we going to do?” John’s answer was simple and pastorally very useful, “A man can only receive what is given him from heaven… he must become greater and I must become less” [2] .

What is ‘given to you from heaven? Do you know? Have you been pulled aside by something else? Has the simplicity of the job we are meant to do been buried by a mountain of rubble we just cannot clear – a little like Nehemiah before the walls of Jerusalem? The answers to these questions could shape some fruitful discussion when you get home.

He knows haw you are formed, and he remembers that we are dust… our congregations need to realize this too:

Ministers are human beings, made of dust, subject to the same forces that destroy the men and women who sit in the pews. For some reason, many church members have the idea that their pastor is exempt from personal pressures and problems - or that he has a secret system for overcoming the difficulties of life and ministry. He does not.

Warren Wiersbe [3]

The most appalling thought of all

Of course, we are, quite literally, dust! God took the dust of the ground and breathed life into it and the first humans came into being. The word apaar means dust or loose, dry earth. Latin for earth is humus from which we get the word human. We are, in essence, dust animated by the breath of God in us. Psalm 104 says, “You take away your breath, they die and return to the dust” (Psalm 104:29c). We are of heaven and of earth. So we belong in the world God has made, we ‘fit’ into it like a glove (Psalm 104:23 & 26). But we must never forget that we are of heaven too… otherwise we are only dust.

Verses 14 to 15, taken just by themselves, are a spiritual Haiku that encapsulates the most appalling thought in the Hebrew mind – the fear of death and oblivion.

When I was a kid I used to play on a large piece of rough ground, on the banks of the river Wear in Sunderland. The place was completely overgrown, and every now and then you would come across a gravestone hidden in the long grass and brambles. This was Galley’s Gill, one of Sunderland’s early graveyards. I remember looking at the names on those old tombstones and trying to imagine who these people were. But I couldn’t, they were long dead and long forgotten. There were no clues as to who these people were, what they achieved or what they loved; their place remembered them no more.

This haunts modern man like a spectre; this is a little bit of the script of one of Tony Hancock’s last broadcasts performed in 1964 :

‘What have you achieved? What have you achieved? You lost your chance, me old son. You contributed absolutely nothing to this life. A waste of time being here at all. No place for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can expect is a bunch of daffodils in an old jam jar and a rough-hewn stone bearing the inscription, ‘he came and he went.’ And in between? Nothing? ’Nobody will even notice you’re not here. After about a year somebody might say down the pub, ‘Where’s old Hancock then? I haven’t seen him round lately.’ ‘Oh he’s dead you know.’ ‘No, is he?’ A right old raison d’être that will be. Nobody else will even know I existed. Nothing to leave behind, nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That’s the bitterest blow of all.’

Stakeholders in infinity!

Fragile as flowers, lightweight as dust, we are destined to be forgotten. For ancient Israel, and most cultures through history, the most appalling thought of all was to die and be forgotten, hence the passion for genealogy and for keeping a brothers name alive through the generations.

In contrast, God is not like dust, he cannot be blown away; he is infinite (17). You need a little help from Psalm 90:1-2 to fill out this verse:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.

Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

First, before the creation of the earth (and presumable, long after its destruction) God just is Whatever infinity is, and nobody really knows, God inhabits it, it is his birthright. He is eternal.

Second, for Israel, each successive generation had found God to be their home, their dwelling place. The place you feel safe, the place you find comfort, and the place you have most fun in… that is God; our dwelling place.

But what happens when the generation dies out? Moses was sure; we return to dust (Psalm 90:3) But David was not so sure; “From everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him and his righteousness with their children’s children, with those who keep his covenant”. Moses’ ‘from and to’ were about God, David’s are about God’s people… his love for them beginning in eternity past and continuing into eternity future. Psalm 90 speaks of God’s eternal being, Psalm 103 sings of God’s eternal grace.

And it is a short step from here to some of the most breathtaking words in the New Testament: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:3-6) “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13b-14). It is not difficult to see where Paul got his theology from when you read these two Psalms.

David’s covenant is obsolete. We have a covenant that is even more glorious; it gives life, where the old brought death, it leads to righteousness, where the old left condemnation. David suspected that God would resurrect his people, the Old Testament prophets thought that he may do, the disciples wondered if it could be possible. Until a group of women ran into Jerusalem early one morning, making straight for the secret room where Jesus’ male disciples were hiding. One of them banged on the door, it was opened by a man with a tired and worried face. One of the women spoke, “He is not there, he’s alive, we’ve seen him!”

What David could only guess as, we know! This God who redeems your life from the pit (4), has taken his covenant people to be the objects of his love for eternity. Through this everlasting covenant the children of dust become stakeholders in infinity; from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him.

Covenant Love

It is worth reflecting again about that word ‘love’ – such an insipid English word for a full blooded Biblical one. When Miles Coverdale published the first complete printed English Bible he used the word ‘loving-kindness’ in each instance in this Psalm translating the Hebrew hessed. Today’s NASB follows his example. What is this love?

Technical stuff about words is pretty tedious, and this is where poetry helps us through the difficulties. Hessed is the ‘love that will not let me go’ in George Matheson’s lovely old hymn:

O Love that wilt not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths it’s flow
may richer, fuller, be.

This is hessed, the love that will not let me go and that drives God to extremes; like Bethlehem, like Gethsemane, like Calvary. This is Love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins [4] .

What does it mean to ‘keep his covenant’? Whatever it meant for David, for us it means to trust. Trust him to keep his promises to you no matter how dark it gets or how muddy the waters become. You don’t have to believe that Joshua made the sun stand still, or that the world was made in seven days, you only have to believe that he knows the way home through the darkness, that he has done all that is necessary to get you to heaven, and all you need to do is follow him. Believe this, through thick and thin:

The Lord has established his throne in heaven, his kingdom rules over all

Psalm 103:19

A significant place in an unshakable kingdom

Praise is therapeutic, and Psalm 103 looks and feels like a journey from uncertainty to exaltation. The teaching has worked, and the emotions stream out in praise. Unimaginable beings are caught up in the act of worshipping him… angels, armies, the very creation itself… and me… there I am (22b)… a little voice, but a significant one.

He would notice if I wasn’t there.

[1] Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Bloomsbury, ISBN 0 7475 4384 4

[2] John 3:27-30

[3] Quoted in Christianity and Renewal, January 2003

[4] I John 4:10