Sabbath: April 10, 2010

Sabbath--rest in our Lord--how I need you. Lord, take away my guilt, as indeed you have taken it away, that I might enter into your praise. You have done so, and I am richly blessed.

[The practice of Sabbath keeping has been somewhat elusive as of late, and its depth has escaped me, likely this is precisely because I have been out of practice. Inching progress has been made, though, and as I sat next to our Sabbath candle the other weekend, its warm glow permeated the whole house. I spent time praying through Psalm 29, a common opening psalm for a Sabbath service, and encountered the one named 18 times in these 11 short verses in a real way.]

Psalm 29

A Psalm of David

1 Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,​
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name;
worship the Lord in holy splendor.

3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over mighty waters.
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox.

7 The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
8 The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

9 The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl,​
and strips the forest bare;
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”

10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
11 May the Lord give strength to his people!
May the Lord bless his people with peace!



This is a wonderful and rich psalm. It fits beautifully the opening of a Sabbath service, for it calls us to enter into praise, ascribing to the Lord his due, while also asking Him to grant us strength and peace, things that are certainly not our due at all. When, in the end, we ask the Lord to share his strength with us and grant us peace, it helps us to realize that all of our strength--all of our peace--comes from Him. All of our prosperity is his as well, and we recognize this in prayer as our own strivings to achieve the same are laid down.

The Lord's great power is over all created things, and over all other claims to authority. The only hierarchy allowed here is the order of the Lord. The cedars are broken, the wilderness is shaken, Lebanon is made to skip, and you think the seas roar?? well His voice thunders over all. Here, our voice responds to his--to the Creator who sustains and rules over that which he has wrought. All hail the mighty King!

The nature of any psalm pushes past dry words on paper and rushes forth in song from the mouth of the congregation, but psalm 29 in particular (vv.1-2) calls for self-involving song. We necessarily move toward our God as we sing from within a rebellious world. The chaos that would seethe, destroy, and claim us as its own is shaken out of its presumptive claim of ultimacy. The darkest forest is a garden for children to play. The Lord all acts on behalf of his people, and it is his activity that strengthens our petitions.

But the reason Psalm 29 is especially fitting for the Sabbath ritual is that in it we do not approach God in his grand and mighty--indeed awe and fear inspiring--exercise of raw power. We approach him, as we find in vv.10-11, as the one who simply sits enthroned. He is already the creator, and he is already the master; he need not establish his supremacy. He is the One who rests on the seventh day.

In this week after Easter we especially remember that he has already defeated death. We do not need the Lord to "act" on our behalf as much as we need Him to allow us to share in the life of He who has already defeated all that might oppress us. On this Sabbath day we sing to the Lord because he is Himself, the Lord. And we enter into a time of rest to encounter and praise the one from whom we receive all. We sing, we pray, that we might receive his blessing of peace. We rest to allow ourselves time to know that his peace is indeed here.