May God be merciful and bless us.
May his face smile with favor on us.
The other day we had a guest speaker during our Zoom staff meeting. David Hamilton of YWAM Kona shared about Psalm 67 and it was wonderful. David is a genius who has such wonderful insight into the scripture. He inspired me to take a deeper look at this seven-verse Psalm.
This is a song. It’s meant to be sung, and it’s meant to have instrumentation. We don’t know who the author is. Many Psalms are attributed to David, but we’re not sure who wrote this one. It appears that the psalmist may have been going through a rough time. Here’s the first line:
1 May God be merciful and bless us.
May his face smile with favor on us.
He’s first asking for mercy and blessing. And that seems so important to me too in these coronavirus days. This first line echoes the famous Benediction prayer found in Numbers 6:24-26. It’s likely that the author and the audience would have been very familiar with these words, and that familiarity may have even offered some comfort in difficult times. We don’t know the psalmist’s context and why they’re asking for mercy and blessing. But certainly, this is universal. We all face times when we need God’s favor. And perhaps, like few other times in history, it seems the whole earth is in need of God’s mercy today.
Selah
I don’t think anyone knows exactly for sure what selah means. It appears to be a musical instruction. It’s sometimes translated as ‘interlude’ or ‘pause’. It could be an instruction to lift up our hands or even our voices. Selah very well may mean to pause, to meditate, to consider, to have space to reflect. There seems to be some meaning here. The psalmist places it after just one verse, and after a familiar phrasing of the Benediction. Perhaps the intent is to have those participating to more deeply reflect on this familiar prayer and receive comfort in the interlude.
2 May your ways be known throughout the earth,
your saving power among people everywhere.
3 May the nations praise you, O God.
Yes, may all the nations praise you.
4 Let the whole world sing for joy,
because you govern the nations with justice
and guide the people of the whole world.
After asking for blessing and favor, and after an important pause, the psalmist shifts our focus. We go straight to the nations, and the YWAMer in me responds to this, haha! It’s no longer about us or our need, it’s about God’s saving power among people everywhere. Yes, we need help, but let’s move on from that. May the whole earth know God’s salvation.
I think it’s good to have a shift in focus here. It’s too easy to meditate on our own need in these times. I am under a stay at home order, where I can get stuck focusing only on my immediate needs. So it’s healthy for me and good for me to remember the needs in the wider world. I can shift my focus from myself to what is in God’s heart— that the whole earth would be drawn to him and know him.
Selah
Here again, the author calls for a pause, for a meditation on this. Perhaps it allows those participating to let their own focuses shift toward God’s great global agenda. Perhaps here is an invitation for us too to lift our hands and our voices and ask that God be made famous in all the nations— especially as so many are in such need.
5 May the nations praise you, O God.
Yes, may all the nations praise you.
6 Then the earth will yield its harvests,
and God, our God, will richly bless us.
Verses 5 echoes verses 3, and this repetition reinforces the sweet message of this song. Verse six seems to celebrate a hope for a good future.
7 Yes, God will bless us,
and people all over the world will fear him.
Verse seven assures us that God will do what we are hoping for— that he will bless us like we asked in the first verse. This nicely bookends the song with a reference to the first lines.
My takeaway from Psalm 67 is this. I’m not to ignore my own need. It’s right to be realistic and to acknowledge that I need God’s help. However, I’m not supposed to stop there. Reflection on my own need and reaching out to God reminds me to consider and connect with his purposes. Of course, I can ask him to help me, but it’s good for me to turn my attention to God’s ongoing global agenda. Even in the midst of a stay-at-home order, even in a social distancing world, I am to experience something more expansive that connects me to the wider world.