May 25, 2017: Day 145 – Psalm 145

So I guess I would focus on vs.8-9 for this psalm.  We have heard it before.  This is absolutely a psalm of praise and thanksgiving, with no complaining or no request for the enemies to be destroyed and massacred like so many other psalms before it.  I like that about this psalm.  

Look at vs. 16 and think about the phrase: “You open your hand.”  I’ll never forget when I was doing my psychological evaluation in order to become a pastor they had you draw your family.  I am not an artist.  So I used stick figures and it looked something like this:

family

I told you I’m not a good artist.  But they gave me way more time than I needed, so I added hands to the figures, and on those hands were 5 fingers on each hand attached to the arm.  By the time I was finished each figure was decked out with hands that had very visible long fingers.  When the psychologist came into the room and saw what I drew I could tell that she was not pleased.  When it came time for the evaluation I was told that because I drew “open hands”, that it meant that I had some repressed anger within me.  Hmmm, maybe, but probably not because of the “open hands”.

Here in this psalm we find the image of the “open hands” as being a positive one.  It was the source of that which satisfied desires of every living thing.  I’ll take an open hand any day.  But about that repressed anger…