In my daily Bible reading, I was listening to an audio Bible using a different translation than I normally use (the ESV). As I came to Psalm 65, the Psalm began with the familiar words, ‘Praise waits for you in Zion…’ (as opposed to the ESV: ‘Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion…). Those words brought to my mind a familiar hymn I have sung in church a couple of times from the Trinity Hymnal which is a paraphrase of Psalm 65.
I was immediately struck by the fact that having sung the words of this psalm made my affections much more in tune with the mood of the author/text. I have been arranging psalms for guitar for a good year now, and have completed 5 or 6 arrangements. I have found that in each case, the psalm has come alive to me, and gripped me, through singing and memorizing, as well as through the poetic rendering of it as song. A psalm always, in my experience, means more to you if you have sung it (and better, actually meant it and felt it as you sang).
Psalm 65 would likely be one to glance over for me were it not for the fact that I had sung it. This made my attention sharp. Why was this particular psalm worthy of singing in a modern church culture that usually refuses to do so?
It is a beautiful psalm. The ESV hardly does it justice. The opening line, ‘Praise waits for thee in Zion’ is surely not done justice by ‘praise is due to you.’ The word rendered ‘waits/due to’ usually implies silence, repose, inactivity. The text is speaking of a quiet, still, patient longing for God’s presence in the midst of his people, in his holy city. Because of God’s wondrous works – from his hearing of the prayers of his people, to his work of creation and providence, to his atoning for the sins of the people – Zion longs in meditative, reverent silence to pay her vows to God and see all its people praise him.
From the perspective of a Christian, this should be a description of the church and her worship. I love that our Book of Church Order calls for a time of silent preparation before worship. We need this ‘waiting.’ Praise waits for God in his church as his people gather together. I will be the first to say that we should not be so reverent as to appear as though we are at a funeral during a Sunday morning service of worship. But reverence is not a bad thing. In my most recent visits to churches outside of my denomination, though, I have found it to be a non-existent thing. Perhaps we should sing Psalm 65 more often, and take it more seriously. The atonement of Christ, God’s wondrous works of providence and creation, and his sheer presence with his people (unspeakably glorious thought) demands not only our joy and jubilation, but reverence and awe.
