Watchmen

Today's beautiful hungry prayer comes from Psalm 130, which Martin Luther called a "Pauline Psalm" because it's an Old Testament expression of the Gospel in typical Paul-terms.

The Hebrew Poetry is beautiful too: 

• There are clever word plays - the word for "kept record of my sins" is the same as the word for "watchman".
• The Hebrew word for "wait" is "qavah" - which means to wait, to hope, while God weaves the tangled ends together. 
• The poet changes standard word order around, where the convention in Hebrew is to put the verbs first, he puts God's Name or "My Soul" first. 
• In some cases he even leaves the verb out - leaving us to insert it. You see this in vs.6 where the word "wait" doesn't occur in the Hebrew text, but you automatically want to insert it and it makes the passage more poignant, more passionate and more hungry.

We can break the Psalm into 4 parts:

v1-2: Despair over our brokenness.

v3-4: Good News because God doesn't guard our sins: He forgives them.

v5-6: Hunger for intimacy with God.

v7-8: Message of love and rescue for the world.

In the first two parts, the Psalm briefly and eloquently expresses our brokenness and the beautiful truth that God forgives us instead of auditing us.

But it's the beautiful part three that grabs me today...

When we have truly been forgiven, we come to that place of being able to sing, "I was there when they crucified my Lord, I was there when they crucified my Lord. Ooooh sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble tremble, for I was there when they crucified my Lord."

The fear-reverence that the Psalmist expresses in v4 leads him to the longing expressed in v5. "I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope."

And then comes v.6 with the verbs left out, but implied:

"My Soul ... for the Lord, like watchmen ... for the morning, like watchmen ... for the morning."

Can you feel the hunger? The longing? He knows that He needs God more than anything! He's a watchman longing for the dawn - he's a soul longing for God.

This hunger (satisfied) then leads him from first person singular to third person plural - O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with Him is unfailing love and full redemption.

Read this Old Testament Gospel Presentation and let its aroma make you hungry too...