Nate Fish’s Blog

Psalm 29:10-11
10 The LORD rules over the floodwaters.
The LORD reigns as king forever.
11 The LORD gives his people strength.
The LORD blesses them with peace.

If you don’t know already, David (and the other psalmists) wrote this beautiful Hebrew poetry different from the English poetry with which we are familiar. Instead of achieving unity in a poem by using catchy words that rhyme in each line, they used unity of thought. In almost every Psalm, the first line is directly related to the thought of the second line. I knew there was a good reason I paid (and still pay) the big bucks for a good Christian liberal arts education. I wouldn’t know this stuff otherwise.

Anyway, I was reading this chapter in Psalms this morning and it really struck me as one of those Psalms that speaks to the current world so well. God rules over the floodwaters (v.10). He is king. That means there is a flood–perhaps both literally and metaphorically–that he is constantly withholding from bringing our ruin. You know personally and globally what these floodwaters can be. The unredeemed outcome of a family curse or a third world war sparked by warring descendents of Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Esau, and the like. Remember, though, he didn’t create the floodwaters directly, Sin did that directly, indirectly, or whatever way you want.

Verse 11 then correlates strength and peace. Certainly this is an idea Christians hear often, but rarely understand the implications. I think we often mistake our peace as meaning we finally have everything under our own control (redundant pronouns intended). No wonder we feel like the proverbial finger in the dam so often–we built the dam, so it must have holes. Christians can be so holey. Also, we overlook that peace is God’s strength given to us as he being the one strong enough to withhold the flood. So, this peace David speaks of is not just God giving his people his strength through the Holy Spirit, it is also him allowing us to witness his almighty power. That is the predominant source of power people in the Old Testament ages saw from God; it is also the source that people who don’t know Christ can see and be pointed toward.

That’s the top of our wedding cake; we’re getting ready to eat it in celebration of our first anniversary. This first year has definitely been incredible and we’ve cherished the the moments that
have been icing on the filling cake of life. Soli Deo gloria.