Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
PSALM 103:13-18 | As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust. As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.
This passage has sublime poetry and deep theology. The guilty and forlorn are again reassured that God’s compassion is father-like and tender, because he knows our weaknesses, our struggles, and our mortality. The hymn “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven” has the beautiful line based on these verses: “Father-like he tends and spares us; well our feeble frame He knows.”
Our mortality is captured in Verses 15-16 in the image of the grass and flowers, temporary parts of the landscape, beautiful and fragile and evanescent. But this mortality is contrasted and mitigated by a greater love that is from “everlasting to everlasting.”
Which is your favorite line in this passage?
What strikes you today in this beautiful meditation?
