This past summer, our church, Ada Bible Church did a series titled
Songs : Exploring the Psalms.
And one of the things I love most about our church is how Bible-based it really is. (Shouldn't all churches be?!?) But seriously. The preaching is straight from scripture, and scripture is dissected and explained each week in ways that those new to the Bible can understand, and those who have been studying the Bible their entire life can still learn new things. In the last year and a half that we've been at Ada Bible, I know that I've learned more about the Bible than I've learned in years elsewhere.
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On the first Sunday of the Psalms series, our pastor preached on Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
both now and forevermore.
Like many other pieces of scripture, I'm sure I had read this or heard it read multiple times in my life. But our pastor had us to read this to each other as an encouragement to one another, and I felt like I heard this Psalm in a whole new way. If you and I were in a conversation right now, I would read it aloud to you so hopefully you could hear it in a whole new way too. To fully know and accept that the same God who created the Heavens and the Earth will watch over and protect you and I, is pretty amazing.
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And since the Psalms were in fact originally intended to be sung, the worship leader from our church set this Psalm to music. It's pretty incredible really, and it's quite possible that I've listened to it, oh, about a million times. Click here to watch the video. If you have the time, watching the entire sermon is so worthwhile, but if you can't do that now, at least take a minute to watch the song which begins around the 10:00 mark in the video.
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Christmas morning, Eric really surprised me with a custom print that he had made with the help of Dee of Red Letter Words where they inserted our family names into this Psalm. For whatever reason, on Christmas Eve night, this Psalm kept popping into my mind, so then to see it written out Christmas morning, with our family's names included had me completely reduced to tears.
Christmas morning, Eric really surprised me with a custom print that he had made with the help of Dee of Red Letter Words where they inserted our family names into this Psalm. For whatever reason, on Christmas Eve night, this Psalm kept popping into my mind, so then to see it written out Christmas morning, with our family's names included had me completely reduced to tears.
I'm looking forward to hanging this in our home and always having it serve as a reminder to us that God will watch over this family. This is something that I will certainly treasure forever.
