Reveal | Day 35- April 3 | Psalm 69: 1-4, 7-16

The Grand Canyon is a top-rated destination stretching over 250 miles and boasting six million visitors a year. Although I have seen it more than once, its sheer vastness and depth has me awestruck every time. My brain physically cannot comprehend the miles and miles of roaring canyon walls and trenches with the occasional glimpse of the Colorado river snaking its way through. Something like that makes you feel truly small and vulnerable in a way that is simply unexplainable but also humbling. Have you ever had an experience like this?

In this poem by David, we see the use of poetic parallelism. Many Hebrew poems use parallelism over rhyming lines or rhythm to get their meaning across. The idea is to continually repeat the main focus of the poem, through compact and highly structured lines.

“The voice of the Lord strikes with bolts of lightning. The voice of the Lord makes the barren wilderness quake; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists mighty oaks and strips the forests bare.”

The psalmist uses parallelism here to show us the nature of the Lord. While this paints an intimidating picture, the response given to this power is “Glory!” Should we fear the Lord? Yes. Fear or respect for such a powerful and awesome God is a great reminder of how huge our God is and how small we are, but he still chooses us. It also shows us how great a thing is our salvation. A gap even wider than the Grand Canyon separated us from God, making the love of God that closed that gap so much more incredible. The same God who splits trees, rages the seas, thunders, and shakes the mountains is the same God who extends mercy and forgiveness to sinners and calls us sons and daughters. That is who the Lord is.