10.22.2025
Fall is my favorite season! The last couple of mornings, getting out when the temp was in the 30s and highs in the low 70s, couldn’t be more perfect.
And it’s a perfect time to revisit one of my favorite psalms, Psalm 65 – especially since we’re reading it during Sunday’s service. Psalm 65 invites us to pull our heads away from our phones, our tablets, our TV screens or whatever, look around and celebrate the greatness of God.
The psalm begins where we usually think of worship beginning – in the temple:
Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion;
and to you shall vows be performed . . .
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
your holy temple.
But our psalmist is writing to remind us that praise is limited to neither the temple nor a church building. The psalmist invites us to step outside, to look around and see God’s mighty works:
You are the hope of all the ends of the earth
and of the farthest seas.
By your strength you established the mountains;
you are girded with might.
You silence the roaring of the seas,
the roaring of their waves,
the tumult of the peoples.
Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;
you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.
For the psalmist, the stunning sunrises and sunsets we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks are more than marking time. The psalmist, looking at sunrise and sunset, sees something we miss: a shout of joy. And it’s not just the sunrises! Everything we see in nature is the work of God’s hands. As you read the psalm, notice all the verbs the psalmist uses to describe God’s actions: God establishes, silences, makes, visits, enriches, provides, prepares, waters, softens, blesses, and crowns. God does it all!
I love that our church is in a rural community. The drive down Pepper Road is a feast of beautiful vistas, and every soybean, cotton boll, cornstalk, wild-flower we drive by is the work of God himself.
You visit the earth and water it,
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide the people with grain,
for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth.
You crown the year with your bounty;
your wagon tracks overflow with richness.
The pastures of the wilderness overflow,
the hills gird themselves with joy,
the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,
the valleys deck themselves with grain,
they shout and sing together for joy.
Not only is the psalmist inviting us to see the life-giving presence of God in all of creation, but we’re also invited to see that this world, filled with God-given life, is constantly praising God. How?
Just by being what it is.
The mountains, the sea and the sun all fulfill their role in God’s creation. And the psalmist looks out and sees that every mountain and every cotton field “sing together for joy” by simply doing and being what it was created to do and be!
Now, here is the fun part (at least for me, and I know I’ve got some other Bible-nerds reading this): Go back to verse 1 for a moment. From the KJV down to the ESV, most of our translations translate verse 1 similarly to the NRSV: “Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion.” But there’s something missing: the Hebrew word, dumiyah, means “silence,” and is usually left out or changed to something like “wait,” as in “Praise awaits you, our God, in Zion” (NIV).
Why is it left out? No clue.
The NASB at least makes this awkward attempt: “There will be silence before You, and praise in Zion.”
But the more literal translation is best of all: “To you, silence is praise, God, in Zion.” Yes, the Psalmist is inviting us to look up . . . and to shut up! God’s greatness is beyond what language can express. The silent praise of creation is powerfully portrayed in the opening verses of Psalm 19:
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork . . .
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
The gateways of the rising and setting sun shout for joy, the meadows and valleys sing together with joy, the heavens are telling the glory of God, and, yet, none of them make a sound!
They praise God by doing and being what they were created to do and be.
Maybe that’s the invitation behind our psalm: we praise God best not when we’re singing but when we’re being.
When the weather gets nippy, the sumac and the sugar maples turn red and the oaks and the hickories blaze with gold, that’s nature putting on its best for an annual celebration of God’s goodness, and nature is inviting us to join the party. But there are no noisemakers! Silent awe in the face of the splendors around us may be the perfect praise. “To you, silence is praise, O God.”
Blessings,
Pastor Terry