Daily Worship

Re: Store, Extensive, steadfast love

Fiona Reynolds January 22, 2025 4 3
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Psalm 36: 5-10 (NRSV)

5 

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
    your faithfulness to the clouds.

6 

Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
    your judgements are like the great deep;
    you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.

7 

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

8 

They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

9 

For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light we see light.

10 

O continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
    and your salvation to the upright of heart!

I learnt this song as a child: perhaps you know it too?

“Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the heavens above;
deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Saviour’s love.
I, though so unworthy, still am a child of his care,
for his word teaches me, that his love reaches me, ev'rywhere."

C. Austin Miles (1868-1946), 1914, public domain

I believe that the song refers to Romans 8, where Paul reminds us that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God. Not that my brain knew that as it dug this wee song out of the recesses of my mind and presented it to me for consideration, while I was reading Psalm 36. Sometimes, albeit very occasionally, my brain can play a blinder!

I would struggle to remember this Psalm and carry it with me for whenever I need reminding of God’s steadfast loving kindness and stubbornly loyal mercy. However, this song is already part of me, even if I forgot about it until now, and it offers a memory key to the much richer language of Psalm 36. After all, it is not the words I need to recall but the message of God’s love.

 

Prayer:

 

Source of all that is good and precious in our world,

restore in us your loving gaze for the whole of creation,

whereby there is nowhere we can go —

no height to which we can climb nor depth to which we can dive —

nowhere that is bereft of your abundant, all-consuming love.

From there, may we live and act and move accordingly, AMEN.