the way God told His priests to put His name on the people --
the way God designed for His people to be blessed:
The Lord make His face shine upon you
and be gracious unto you.
Psalm 31, right in the midst of the psalmist's plea to be rescued from those who are persecuting him:
Make Your face shine upon Your servant;
save me for Your mercies' sake.
I don't know about anybody else, but I think it's really cool that David, in his grief and his weakness and his prayers, grabbed hold of the liturgy to speak it back to God.
And I think the psalm sheds light on what we hear at the end of every Service. The pastor's not just saying some nicey-nice words about happy stuff happening to us. He's not wishing us some inspirational, [temporally] abundant-life kind of week. No. The words of the Benediction are about mercy and salvation and rescue and the resurrection of the body. These words are about Jesus and His suffering and death for us.
PS: In case I forget later where the line from
the title was drawn, it's from Psalm 80.
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