September 16, 2022: Day 200 – Psalms 99-104

Every year when we were in Italy in the fall, sometime in October normally, we would take our church communities and go up to the mountains to gather chestnuts.  We would call it the hunt for the chestnuts.  And every year it was a great event, a real time of fellowship.  We would eat at a restaurant up there with our prize chestnuts that we knew we would cook eventually.  You see, in Italy they still have chestnut trees that produce edible chestnuts.  

Every year as soon as we arrived and before we started our hunt I would gather the community and I would read Psalm 104 on the summit of the mountain so that we could have a 360 view of the glory of God’s creation.  There is something about being able to see the glory of God’s creation that elicits awe and wonder in our great creator.  

We can’t skip over Psalm 103 which reminds us that the Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Now, we didn’t begin with such praise, we found ourselves in lament for a period of time in Psalm 102.  The beginning of the prayer we read: “A prayer of an afflicted man.  When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord.”  It is pretty heavy.  But all of these Psalms remind of this song.