But You, Lord, remain forever, and Your name remains to all generations. Psalm 102:12 NASB But – The lowly conjunction. Not spectacular, as words go. Relegated to expressing relations between other words, we hardly think of them as crucial connectors until someone uses them incorrectly. There’s a big difference between “law came through Moses but grace through Jesus…
My days are like a lengthened shadow, and I wither away like grass. Psalm 102:11 NASB Lengthened – For those of you who aren’t familiar with exposure problems in photography, let me explain HDR. High Dynamic Range is the situation where the light in the picture varies significantly between highs (whites) and lows (blacks). While the…
Because of Your indignation and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up and thrown me away. Psalm 102:10 NASB Lifted me up – As we know, the Hebrew word nāśāʾ is “used almost six hundred times with basically three separate meanings: “to lift up”; “to bear, carry, support”; and “to take, take away.”[1] “To bear”…
Because of Your indignation and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up and thrown me away. Psalm 102:10 NASB Indignation – I’m guessing that if I asked you for a definition of indignation, you’d stumble a bit. It’s not a commonly used word. We have some inkling of its meaning, but not precisely. If we…
Because of Your indignation and Your wrath; for You have lifted me up and thrown me away. Psalm 102:10 NASB Because – Who’s fault is all this? Who’s to blame for the tragedy of human living? When Heschel remarks “history is a nightmare,” we know precisely what he means. Humanity has produced escalating moral entropy since…
For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with weeping. Psalm 102:9 NASB Ashes – “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Ominous words from Genesis 3:19. We don’t like to think about them, but we know they’re true for every one of us. The psalmist uses a little word…
My enemies have taunted me all day long; those who deride me have used my name as a curse. Psalm 102:8 NASB Deride – The psalmist finally gets down to the real reason for his complaint. It took a while. All those verses about how he feels—abandoned, anxious, abused, avoided, alone—come down to this: “My enemies taunt me and…
I lie awake, I have become like a solitary bird on a housetop. Psalm 102:7 NASB Solitary – From the kitchen window of our home in Parma, we look out on the roof of the condominium next door. Nearly every day a pigeon flies to the corner of that roof and sits. I assume it is…
I resemble a pelican of the wilderness; I have become like an owl of the ruins. Psalm 102:6 NASB Pelican/ owl – Why pelican? Why owl? First, let’s address the Christian mythology about the pelican. It starts with Thomas Aquinas. During the breeding season, the Dalmatian pelican’s pouch turns blood red, and the birds often press…
Because of the loudness of my groaning my bones cling to my flesh. Psalm 102:5 NASB Loudness – Read this again. How can the volume of my groaning be the cause of bones clinging to flesh? Does sound have anything to do with the consequences of malnutrition? In fact, severely malnourished human beings, bones exposed because of…
