1 May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face shine on us—
2 so that your ways may be known on earth,
your salvation among all nations.
3 May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
4 May the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you rule the peoples with equity
and guide the nations of the earth.
5 May the peoples praise you, God;
may all the peoples praise you.
6 The land yields its harvest;
God, our God, blesses us.
7 May God bless us still,
so that all the ends of the earth will fear him.
This Psalm is a great reminder of what the kingdom of God is all about and what – in too many respects – christianity has become for so many.
We LOVE verse one. Verse one is our theology: May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us
But we certainly like to end it there – it’s all about meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, Jesus, and all this is for meeeeeeeeee, for my glory and my fame….
However, this psalm DOES have a verse 2: so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.
There doesn’t seem to be a cheese-free way of saying this [and for that i humbly apologise], but the reason it is suitably named ‘history’ is because it is in fact ‘His story’ – the story of life is one about God and yet how quickly we continue to bring it back to being all about us…
Verse 3 should be our prayer and our cry: May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you.
And the rest is just beautiful. This is a delightful, happy, inspiring little psalm.
When God is praised and when we realise and live out that the story is about Him, it does result in us being blessed and in nations being glad…