Room for blessing

Jock Stein December 04, 2025 2 0

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Psalm 103 (NIVUK)

1 Praise the Lord, my soul;
    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits –
3 who forgives all your sins
    and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
    and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all the oppressed.

7 He made known his ways to Moses,
    his deeds to the people of Israel:
8 the Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbour his anger for ever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

13 As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.
15 The life of mortals is like grass,
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting
    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
    and his righteousness with their children’s children –
18 with those who keep his covenant
    and remember to obey his precepts.

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.
21 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,
    you his servants who do his will.
22 Praise the Lord, all his works
    everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

This is a very inclusive psalm, and it inspired the following stanza in The Iolaire, which I wrote to try and offer a theology that makes room for people:

Zip up your jacket that flaps in the slipstream
of blame from the engines of fateful theology;
rip up the packet of sugary half-truths that
foul up the bloodstream of Proddy and Pape:
wrap up your ticket for high celebration,
and lodge it in God’s banquet hall.

The psalm begins and ends with blessing – an inner desire to bless God which responds to the myriad ways in which God blesses us, as outlined so passionately here. The praise ends up in heaven, where the creation joins with angels and others to bless the Lord.
I was fielding questions at a recent conference. One was, ‘What is heaven like?’ We have to use picture language, and harps and clouds don’t really hack it these days. Adrian Plass used to say with tongue in cheek, ‘If there’s no cricket in heaven I’m not going there!’ Each person will have their own way of imagining heaven – for the over-worked a place of rest, for the abused a place of safety, for the bored a place of vibrant activity and so on – but for this psalm the focus is on God, and we cannot do better than build our ideas (and our experience) of heaven around Jesus Christ. He has gone to prepare a place for us, though he fills all things – and yet makes room for us (remember that ‘reverse perspective’ of painted icons where rather than narrowing to a vanishing point our perspective is widened as it opens out).

Prayer:

Take a minute to bless God in the words of Psalm 103.

“Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name…"