Psalm 65:1-13

Stephen Ambrose’s wonderful book Undaunted Courage details the exploration of Lewis and Clark who had been directed by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the Western territories that would one day become part of the United States. According to their journals, these two men and their team routinely ran across scenes in the natural world that would leave them gob smacked. One day while navigating a river and having just come around a bend in the river, Lewis and Clark were startled to discover the water was clotted with some white substance. There was a colossal amount of it. Turns out these were the feathers of a gargantuan rookery of molting American Pelicans. At other times the sky was so covered with flocks of Carrier Pigeons as to block sunlight (alas, those abundant birds would be extinct very soon). They encountered herds of Bison so enormous, their hoofbeats thunderously shook the ground and today would probably have registered on the Richter Scale of a seismograph. It is all a reminder of how Genesis 1 depicts God in creation: God never created just a few of anything but reams and reams of birds, of fish, of land animals, of stars and planets. When God created the earth, he let it rip and created dazzling arrays of different creatures and in huge numbers as well. And every time God looked at what God had made, he said the same thing: “That’s good!”

I compared the poet of Psalm 65 to Gerard Manley Hopkins, especially images of plotted landscapes and such: Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

SONG: “I Sing the Mighty Power of God” | Words by Isaac Watts, 1715 | Music (tune: ELLACOMBE)

The song above is a contemplative setting of the opening phrase of Psalm 65 in two languages. It layers the Hebrew dumiyyah with the Latin Vulgate translation of Leka dumiyyah tehillah. In “Mystery of the Missing Silence,” Christian spirituality writer Carl McColman ponders why so many English translations of Psalm 65:1 eliminate or obscure the word dumiyyah that’s in the original text....

My grandson was frantic. He was sleeping over at our house, but he couldn’t fall asleep. It was nearing midnight, and he was afraid he would lie awake all night. Many of us know that problem. My wife said, “Let’s pray about it.” And he said, “It doesn’t work. I’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work.” It’s not just 10 year old's battling insomnia; it’s 80 year old's fighting cancer and 40 year old's living with marital problem and teenagers dealing with sexual temptation. It’s all of us at one time or another. We pray and pray, and it doesn’t work. A sermon on Psalm 65 would address that existential problem head on.