Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. (Ps. 103:1)
David never got over a sense of astonishment at all God had done for him. As he grew older and reviewed his life, he realized that, despite the hardships, God had always delivered him "from the pit." God had kept his promises. In gratitude, David wrote many psalms praising God for his past faithfulness. The king served, in effect, as a national reservoir of memory for his people; he helped the whole nation remember God's benefits.
When the Israelites praised God, their thoughts centered on God's actions in freeing them from slavery and leading them into a land of their own. Their psalms were like history lessons, designed to summon up the past, especially the hallmark days of deliverance under Moses. They studied those days in the Torah, or five books of Moses, and wrote songs to commemorate them.
The memories weren't all positive, and the Israelites' songs could be brutally frank about the ancestors' rebellions, complaints, and lack of gratitude. Yet, they had one great, happy reason to rejoice: God had kept his promise to love them. To psalm writers like David, the events of Israel's history were unmistakable signs of God's grace. They had done nothing to deserve God's love, and yet he had showered love on them.
This psalm could be titled "The Goodness of God." It reviews the dark times of illness and oppression, of sin and rebellion, and then it points with amazement to the remarkable ways in which God transformed all those dark times. God understands and will not overwhelm human weakness: "He knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust." More, despite our failings, he has in store for us an unfathomable eternity of love.
David has one loud message to celebrate: We do not get what we deserve. We get far more. The psalm ends in a burst of praise, starting with the grand sweep of the universe and spiraling back to the setting of the very first verse—David praising God out of his inmost being.
Life Question: When you review your past, do you tend to focus on the victories or the failures?
