This week’s readings in the One Year Bible featured Psalm 85. This Psalm is a beautiful song of trust and gratitude. But nestled about half way through this particular song is two language-loaded and hope-filled verses:
“Unfailing love and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed! Truth springs up from the earth,
and righteousness smiles down from heaven.”
I love pretty words.
Language is important.
Language is how we communicate thoughts. Without language, there can not be any thoughts. And the thoughts communicated by the lyricist in these two verses are profound.
Firstly, look at the word “love.”
This love is much more than the sentimental type of love we find written about in Hallmark cards. The Hebrew word used is “loving kindness.” Loving-kindness is a characteristic of God. Scripture reminds us over and over that God’s loving kindness is better than life. Think about that. For something to be “better than life” it has to have the essence of life in it—along with something greater. The new Living Translation takes the phrase “loving kindness” and translates it into the best language it can’t muster to describe it’s fullness: “unfailing love.”
This characteristic of the Divine Creator; this thing that never ends; this thing that can best be described as LOVE has met truth, and in that meeting of unfailing love and truth, righteousness and peace have kissed.
We understand “righteousness” to be faithfully translated as “faithfulness to the covenant.” Covenant is an agreement, a treaty, a contract, a promise. The affirmation of all of this is truth. We are held in Covenant Embrace. (Covenant Embrace is God’s desire from before time began) It is a fact and that is something we can trust in the midst of failed promises that come to us from every direction in this maddening maze called culture. God will not fail us, God’s love will not stop loving us, God’s truth will not stop holding us. This God whose love never ends is always faithful and will always be faithful to the covenant, and in that truth we discover and experience the kind of peace in our lives that cannot be explained.
So, today, may we try and grasp and understand that we are loved beyond compare; every ounce of our being; be it flaw or beauty, is held and affirmed by our Heavenly Parent.
And in the midst of all that holding is something that materializes and manifests itself as Peace in our lives. It is a peace that passes all understanding.
May you experience life, today, in that place where unfailing love and truth have met. May you be keenly aware that in your life, righteousness and peace are kissing. And as you journey through this day may truth spring up from the earth and may righteousness smile down on you from heaven!
Wow! Such beauty in just two small verses written by a lowly shepherd boy sitting out in a field somewhere more than three thousand years ago.