Verse of the Day 8/10

 

 

Psalm 48:12-14   Walk about Zion, go around her,
    number her towers,
¹³ consider well her ramparts,
    go through her citadels,
that you may tell the next generation
¹⁴     that this is God,
our God forever and ever.
    He will guide us forever.   English Standard Version (ESV)

 

Today's verses from Psalm 48 came  about in the course of  my reading through the Psalms.  The timing  was  perfect  as I  had  just come from Yosemite National  Park and witnessed the grandeur of God's creation.  The psalm is from someone who was on a pilgrimage  to the holy city, Zion and was taken by the beauty of what he saw and moreso  the  God who was worshipped  there, the God of the  Bible, the  God of Genesis, the Creator.

 

As I read these verses I thought  in particular of  "the Cathedral" in Yosemite National Park.  It was a long arduous hike to get there but the views, not  only at  the end of  the journey but glimpses along  the way helped to encourage you go on.  Explorer John Muir  wrote much of his experience  of first witnessing the Cathedral back on September 7, 1869 when he wrote. "No feature, however, of all the noble landscape as seen from here seems more wonderful than the Cathedral itself, a temple displaying Nature's best masonry and sermons in stones. How often I have gazed at it from the tops of hills and ridges, and through openings in the forests on my many short excursions, devoutly wondering, admiring, longing! This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshiper. "

 

The focus of such a journey, to explore the wonder of God's creation, is not  on  the objects themselves, but  on the Creator who put  it  all together.  We should  approach the Bible with the same attitude, exploring, opening passages and books, which, verse by verse reveal the glory of  God in  a very personal way.

 

The next time  we have an  opportunity to see the beauty of  God's creation, may we praise Him and  give Him  all  the  glory for  it,  but not only that, may it  spur us  on  to explore His Word to find the heights and treasure them in our hearts, and share that glory, what we find in it, just as we like to share those beautiful sights in our national parks.

 

 

Blessings,

 

Mike

 

Psalm 48:9-14The Message (MSG)

^9-10 We pondered your love-in-action, God,
    waiting in your temple:
Your name, God, evokes a train
    of Hallelujahs wherever
It is spoken, near and far;
    your arms are heaped with goodness-in-action.

¹¹ Be glad, Zion Mountain;
    Dance, Judah's daughters!
    He does what he said he'd do!

^12-14 Circle Zion, take her measure,
    count her fortress peaks,
Gaze long at her sloping bulwark,
    climb her citadel heights—
Then you can tell the next generation
    detail by detail the story of God,
Our God forever,
    who guides us till the end of time.

 

 

 

 

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