Day 304

Lamentations 4:1-5:22; Hebrews 2:1-18; Psalm 103:1-22; Proverbs 26:23

Bless the Lord

“Bless the Lord, O my soul: And all that is within me, bless His holy name!” – Psalm 103:1

How can this psalm be read without bursting out in joyful smiles and songs and dancing?

The psalm tells us that the Lord forgives all our sins, heals all our diseases, redeems us from destruction, and crowns us with loving-kindness and tender mercies. Let’s dance!

The psalm goes on to assure us that there will be reprimands for our constant disobedience and rebellion. Yet God does not deal with us–His children–according to our sins. (Thanks be to God!) He has not punished us according to the misdeeds we have committed for “His mercy is as high as the heavens above the earth for those who honor and seek Him.”

It tells us that He has removed our transgressions as far as the east is from the west. Because He knows how vulnerable and delicately we are made. When we repent, when we turn away from our wrongdoing, He looks at it no more.

We know that God loves all of His creation; after each day, He proclaimed it Good. And then, those created in His own image exercised their free will and brought sin into His perfect creation.

In Hebrews 2, we are told that Jesus, through His sacrifice and by God’s gracious will, redeemed us from the grip of death. (Dance time again!) The Creeds of the church affirm Jesus in His incarnation as “Fully God and Fully man.” By being fully man and by being tempted in every way that we have ever been tempted, and yet not giving into sin, our Lord was able to “taste death and thereby break the power of him who had death at his command” (v. 14-15), so that we are be able to claim God’s mercy and total forgiveness.

Bless the Lord O my soul… Let’s dance!

Karin Cochran
Church of the Incarnation
Oviedo, FL