I have known times of highest praise in my life. I am a husband and father of four living children. I have my health and I have the privilege of serving as a pastor for God’s people. I have reason to give highest praise to God. So do you. Oh, I don’t know exactly what your heights of blessing are, but you have them. We all do. However, there is also other stuff, darker stuff in our lives. I have known the dark depths in my life. Not all my children are living; too often I am not the husband I should be. I have tasted radiation therapy and watched as chemotherapy dripped into my veins. And being a pastor has had its hardships. I have spent my share of time in the pit of my own depths and the depths of broken humanity. But so, I suspect, have you. Again, I don’t know where or what exactly your pit is, but I am sure you know the depths. But let’s not think of that for the moment ? let’s go to the heights where Psalm 103 begins.
When the psalmist says, “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name“ he is declaring that he wants to praise God from his very gut. He wants praise to be total, from the inside out. And there is good reason for this total praise. He knows that his God bestows all kinds of benefits. He forgives, he heals, he redeems, he crowns, he satisfies. God gives love, compassion and good things —— so much so that we have constantly renewed strength.
I imagine that all of you have experienced these sort of blessings in your lives. Perhaps it was a sick child who recovered, or the warmth you experienced when you first came to know God’s forgiving love. The Psalm tells us that all God’s good ways are known to his people. He is compassionate, He is gracious, He is slow to anger, He is abounding in love. What a God! No wonder the psalmist is filled with praise. What the psalmist knows, what I know, and, no doubt, what many of you know is that we have many rich reasons to praise God!
The riches of the heights of praise are summed up in the following words of verses 10—13:
- PS 103:10 (God) does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.PS 103:11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;PS 103:12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.PS 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
These lyrical words of praise resonate with many of us. We go through periods in our lives where all seems right with the world. These are the times in our lives when all the grades are “A’s,“ all the evaluations are positive, all our stocks are up, the team’s season ends with a championship, and the skies are not cloudy all day. These are the times when all the psalmists’ words of praise for God resound within us. The songs of praise at the beginning of the worship service come easily to us during these times. God himself seems easily accessible, loving and richly fulfilling. Living life at the heights of goodness and fulfillment makes it easy to believe and sing words of praise for our God.
But the psalm is not willing to leave us at the heights. Instead, inexplicably, right at the crescendo of praise the Psalm hits a note that sounds oddly out of tune and off pitch. Suddenly brokenness and dust fill the landscape of praise. In short, the wheels fall off of our vehicle of praise, and we are left in the dust. After multiple verses and dramatic images of goodness and light, we are left with dust. That’s right dust! The psalmist is unwilling to forget about the depths. He is unwilling to leave us at the heights. He brings us to the depths of the dust of death. This is how he puts it in verses 14 through 16:
- 14 for (the Father) knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.15 As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
For my family and I, 1995 which began with such great promise and praise was the year the “wheels came off.“ I got sick, very sick. After months of misdiagnosis from multiple doctors, I discovered that I had Hystiocytosis X, a rare condition that caused a large tumor to grow in my head eating away my left mastoid bone and destroying the function of the middle and inner ear canals. I lost all of my hearing in that ear, much of my balance, and some of my hair as I underwent extensive radiation treatment. But our third child was on the way so there was bright anticipation in the midst of the trouble. Then the ultrasound showed no heart beat. A day later, just days before my radiation was suppose to begin, Angela, our third child, was stillborn. The wheels had fallen off.
I imagine that you too have had times when the wheels have fallen off in your life. Perhaps you are under going radiation therapy right now. Maybe your hair is gone and the doctor has told you that even with the chemo. you don’ have much of a chance. There are some of you listening who are looking at an empty chair where your spouse once sat. It could be that the boss has just said that next Friday will be your last day. Maybe the doctor just called to say the infertility treatment hasn’t worked or perhaps you have heard that dreaded word “reoccurrence.“
Over a 6 year period my disease reoccurred five times: two tumors on the left mastoid, two on the right mastoid, and two on the left hip. Each time the tumors responded to treatment, but it seemed as though I was always just beginning chemo or radiation treatment, just off treatment, or just about to start treatment. During the same period Diane, my wife, had difficulty in two more pregnancies. Both ended in miscarriages. We know the depths and so do you.
And, so does the psalmist. True to real life, the psalm brings us from the heights of praise to the depths of dust. We are dust. Most of us try to avoid this unpleasant truth. We focus on the positive avoiding the negative. When my health was good, when my children were born with breath in their lungs, then it was easy to sing praise. When your job is filled with recognition and promotions, when your spouse loves and caters to you, when your child is the team’s star player, when the chemo works, when the infertility treatment final bears fruit, when you pass that dreaded test, when the credit cards are all paid off, when the braces have come off, and when the roof is newly finished, THEN you praise God. “Forget about the negative,“ many will declare. Some may sing or say what artists have sung or written, like: “The sun will come out tomorrow, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar on tomorrow“ or, “Don’t worry be happy,“ or Que Sera Sera , what will be will be.“ Is this what the psalmist is saying?
For years that’s exactly how I read this psalm. As I struggled with my own disease, grieved the death of my stillborn baby, and wondered if God would ever again bless my wife and me with another healthy pregnancy and child, I simply waited for better times to come. But this is not what the psalm does! The words of the psalm pull us in a different direction, a deeper direction. The psalmist is not satisfied with the simple heights of praise that come during good times. He wants to go deeper. He wants to bring us to the true depth of praise which can only come when we have descended to the depths of our fatal humanity and so see God’s transcendent deity.
The psalm says that our God has compassion on us because we are dust. We are not given words of praise because pain and suffering is gone. Nor are we merely given words of praise in the midst of pain or in spite of pain. Instead, we are given words of praise because God transcends our pain and suffering through his divine plan of salvation. God knows that by ourselves we are simply dead grass and flowers of the field that the wind blows away so that our “place remembers it no more.“ Simply put, by ourselves the heights of praise will come and go depending on our circumstances. In the end, if all we have is praise for the good times, then one day, like everything else that is human, it will turn to dust.
With God, however, ——a God who knows how we are formed and yet still cares for us—— everything is different. He receives our praise from the heights, but also gives us a voice for deep praise that comes from the deep roots of our faith. With God everything is deeper—even our praise. Listen to the remainder of the psalm:
- 17But from everlasting to everlasting
the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children——PS 103:18 with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.PS 103:19 The LORD has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.20 Praise the LORD, you his angels,
you mighty ones who do his bidding,
who obey his word.PS 103:21 Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts,
you his servants who do his will.PS 103:22 Praise the LORD, all his works
everywhere in his dominion.Praise the LORD, O my soul.
Deep praise comes when we hear the great divine “but“ of our Lord. Yes, God knows we are dust, BUT, he is on the move, giving us his love and righteousness. He brings praise even from the depths because he transcends the depths for us in Christ Jesus. Yes, yes, the psalm speaks of the pit, and sin, and disease; it is honest about death and suffering, but only so that we can see the greater reality of divine salvation through Christ. As the Apostle Paul puts it in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?“
Perhaps some of you don’t believe it. Perhaps you are still in the pit of despair—the wheels have fallen off in your life and have remained off. Isn’t it true that some of us stay in the pit, some of us are lost in sin, and some diseases stay with us even producing death? Well, yes, our child, Angela is still dead. Perhaps your pain is still with you. My tumors are gone but I still have annual CT scans that could at any time show the return of tumors. Perhaps you are fearful that your job could end at any time. I am still deaf in one ear and my equilibrium will never fully return. Perhaps your life also is out of balance. Yes, the pain and struggle of life and death are all too real. But the pain, despair, death and dust that we all struggle with does not have the last word. Instead, the last word is a word of praise due to the new reality of salvation in Christ.
This is the new reality to which the psalmist points. Yes, men, women and even children still die, sin still infects and affects us all; but, God is on the move bringing a new a more powerful reality that is fulfilled in Christ. The psalmist knew that God was moving his plan of salvation forward, so, in both high and deep praise, he looks forward to the coming fulfillment of high and deep salvation. What the psalmist could only look forward toward, without seeing it clearly, we now see clearly in Christ. We know the height and depth of praise in Christ Jesus.
Once again we return to Paul’s words in Romans 8 that capture the fulfillment of the psalm’s forward looking praise. There we read:
- “38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“
Do you know the heights of praise that come from the goodness of God in Christ? Then sing with the psalmist! Do you know the depths of praise that come from the very pit of human dust? Then ascend to the heights of heaven in Jesus Christ praising the Lord. In Christ nothing can separate you from praise. Sing with the psalmist, I say. Praise God with all your inmost being! Praise God from the heights and depths!
Paul DeVries
Rev. Paul DeVries, most commonly referred to as “Pastor Paul”, is the Sr. Pastor of Brookside Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is married to Diane (nee Vanden Akker) and the father of four children. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1989 and served for 12 years as the pastor of Unity Christian Reformed Church in Prospect Park, New Jersey. As a pastor his first love and greatest joy comes in the honor of bringing God’‘s Word to his congregation on a weekly basis through his preaching. He enjoys reading, camping with his family, watching his children’‘s sporting events, and working on home improvement projects - inside and outside his home.
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