Psalm 29—A Psalm for New Year’s Eve
A 65-year-old private pilot, named Jim O’Neill, was flying from Glasgow, Scotland to Colchester, England when his vision suddenly failed. Things grew very blurry. He rubbed his eyes. But that didn’t help. At first he assumed he was being blinded by the sunlight, but as his vision gradually went from blurry to dark, it became obvious that something much more serious was going on. To his horror, O’Neill realized he was having a stroke—at 5000 feet up in the air! He groped around, unable to see the instrument panel, and finally found the radio and issued a Mayday alert. The Royal Air Force, never having had a situation like this before, didn’t know what to do. What can you do for a pilot who is literally flying blind? Finally it was decided that the best thing to do would be to dispatch another pilot, who could fly parallel to O’Neill and provide simply, step by step instructions and hopfully talk the blind pilot down. And that’s what happened. From about five-hundred feet away, the other helped O’Neill navigate and guided him to the nearest runway. “Keep your nose down. A gentle right turn. Left a bit. You’re almost there.” It was a classic “by faith, not by sight” kind of situation, as O’Neill had to put his life on the line to trust the simple word of the other pilot guiding him. And landing would be even riskier. But the guiding pilot continued to speak confident, calming and encouraging words that gave O’Neill assurance and hope, and finally, on the eighth try, the blind pilot managed to make a near-perfect landing.[1]
What a nightmare! Although, I suppose it would be even scarier to be a passenger on a plane where the pilot goes blind. Uhhh! I don’t even want to think about that!
But even when our feet are safely on the ground, I am quite confident that every one of us has had an experience where you’ve felt like you were blindsided—struck out of the blue by some kind of affliction that left you feeling like life was careening out of control and crash and burn. Maybe it was a literal stroke, like O’Neill, or perhaps some other diagnosis—cancer, perhaps. Or maybe it was the sudden collapse of a relationship—a divorce, perhaps. Or maybe it was financial–a disabling debt. Or maybe it was the sudden loss of a loved one and you were overcome by instant, debilitating grief.
Life can be going along just fine, you’re cruising along, and suddenly WHAM!!! Out of nowhere, some kind of loss, pain or misfortune find you, not midair at 5000 feet, but often midcareer, mid-semester or midlife. And you start issuing all kinds of Mayday prayers. Perhaps today, as you look ahead into the New Year, you might feel like this, like you are flying blind.
In scary situations like this, we’d love to have a guide come alongside us and show us how to land safely. how often has a friend said read this book to read, or see this doctor—he’s good—or someone’s recommended a marriage counselor, or advised you to listen to a podcast about debt management. But whatever the problem and whatever the proposed solution, deep down we know it’s not enough. We need a word that is sure and certain. We need someone who can take the controls out of our hand and bring us safely down.
The more I study the psalms, the more I’m fascinated by how often this is the precise sentiment that’s being expressed. In the mist of all our crisis moments, the psalms express the confidence and hope that God is the One who is our help. King David, who wrote a majority of the psalms, was very talented and knew well the struggle of walking by faith and not by sight. His life was full of blinding, crash-and-burn moments.
When he was just a teenager, he was anointed to be the king of Israel. But no one knew this except Samuel, the prophet, and David’s own father and brothers, who more often mocked David than encouraged him. No one really seemed to believe that this shepherd boy could be king. Besides, Israel already had a king. And King Saul had no intentions of giving up the throne. In fact, Saul gets so jealous of David, that he tries to kill David on several occasions, until David has to flee into the wilderness and go into hiding. Eventually, his own parents and family have to go into hiding, also, because their lives are at risk because as Saul will stop at nothing to try to hurt David. Imagine feeling responsible for your family having to pack up and leave all their property and their home and go live in a forign land because of the trouble you are in. And then David’s own wife is forcibly married off to another man.
For years—as many as 7 years—David has to live like this. He has to live knowing, on the one hand, He knows he’s the true king of God’s people—anointed by God, himself—yet, on the other hand, he had to live each day like a fugitive, hiding in caves and scraping to get by, begging from others to find enough food to feed him and his men. I wonder how many times David was on the verge of giving up and losing hope. I wonder what he thought when we laid awake at night contemplating what the future held. How many nights he must have tossed and turned, trying to sleep in some damp cave, wrestling with worries. How many times he must have questioned God’s good intentions and God’s plans.
And David’s psalms express these struggles. Wonderfully!!! You could call them David’s Mayday prayers. Yet, despite all the questions and worries, in David’s psalms there are ten times as many praises of God and exclamations of faith and confidence in the Lord and His ability to redeem, restore and rescue.
Today we read Psalm 29. It, too, is a psalm of David. And David emphasizes the LORD’s voice seven times in this psalm. Seven times. Get it? Seven is a perfect number. David is reminding himself and reminding us that this is the perfect voice! And each time, David recalls what this voice has done: “The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over many waters.” These words take us back to Genesis 1:2 where God speaks and the Spirit hovers over the face of the waters directing that spoken Word so that it brings forth all that it says. This is the very Voice—the very Word—that we hear about every year on Christmas morning when we read the very first words of the Gospel of John, about the Word that was with God and was God from the beginning (John 1:1) and through which all things were made.
David continues. In verses five through nine, you can almost hear God’s voice like a subwoofer pumping out deep, bassy reverberations of divine thunder. The image comes to mind of a billowing thunderstorm that blows across the Mediterranean Sea, slamming into Lebanon. It then becomes a whirlwind that passes through Lebanon’s mountains, shearing its strong, colossal cedars—snapping them like toothpicks. Ancient sources record that these trees could stand 150 feet tall with the trunks as much as 40 feet in diameter. But the voice of the LORD destroys entire forests of them. It blasts them, breaks them to pieces and shatters them to smithereens. David seems to be alluding to that moment on Mount Siani when God descended to speak to the people of Israel, whom He had just rescued from Egypt by the ten plagues and parting the Red Sea. But as if witnessing all of that salvation wasn’t enough to impress upon the people God’s mighty power, God then comes to them on top Siani with lightning bolts on every side, earthquakes, fire and smoke. Everything trembles. Everything!
David says the Word of the Lord has the power to lay low the wilderness of Kadesh—which was the region of desert that surrounded Mt. Sinai—causing this wilderness to convulse, as in pains of childbirth. Imagine that. A barren desert writhing like a woman in labor. David says it causes the deer to give birth prematurely and strips the forests bare.
In verse 10, David alludes to the great flood that covered the earth in the days of Noah. The only thing that remained was God’s throne and the ark and those in it. But God alone sheltered the ark from destruction. He was, indeed, the King over the flood. And He IS the King of creation—The King over all!
And that’s the full extent of this psalm. It’s nothing but vivid descriptions of God’s powerful voice. Which is the total opposite of what you’d expect. Because you would think that if someone like David sat down to write a psalm in the midst of the chaos of life, that the psalm would be filled with Mayday-like expressions of fear, doubt, and disappointment. But how incredible that even when David felt like he was flying blind at 10,000 feet, and when he had no clue as to what tomorrow held—or the next day—and when he was wrestling with all the frustration and fear, even so, David’s prayers are filled with beautiful expressions of confidence in God’s Word. He trusts that God will do what He says.
You see, Psalm 29 reminds us that God’s Word is more powerful than anything going on in our lives. We can always bank on His promises. The prophet Isaiah said the “Word of the Lord endures forever” and it accomplishes that purpose for which God sends it (Isaiah 40:8). Again and again, the Bible refers us to the Word of God as the only sure and certain foundation upon which to build our lives, everything else is like shifting sand.
God’s voice hovers over baptismal waters, giving new life. God’s voice cleanses people from sin and sets the prisoners free. God’s voice speaks over bread and wine so that with bread and wine people receive Christ’s true body and blood. Each and every time we stand for confession at the beginning of worship and the pastor speaks those wonderful words of absolution, he is speaking in the stead and by the command of the Lord, Himself.
Psalm 29 ends with these words, “May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace.” After the storms, calamities, catastrophes, explosions, and deluges of life, that’s what you and I get to hear. We always get to hear God’s last word. And it is a word of peace. Every week, we get to leave worship with that wonderful blessing still ringing in our ears: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and grant you His peace.”
Indeed, we get to end this very year with a peace that does not appear in a windstorm or a whirlwind, or a roll of thunder. No. It’s peace that was proclaimed by the singing of angels. It’s a peace that came in the most tangible and concrete way imaginable—in the cry of a little baby. No. It it’s unimaginable… unfathomable. That God would come… in the flesh! How wonderful is Simeon’s song in the way it expresses this. It’s much like a psalm: “O Lord, let your servant depart in peace according to Your Word. For my eyes have seen your salvation…”. Literally!!!! Simeon’s sin-blinded eyes saw the Christ-child. And Simeon wasn’t afraid after that—not of what tomorrow held—not even of death, itself, because Simeon had seen salvation in the Voice of God made Flesh—the Word Made Flesh.
In the same way, how wonderful is the fact that even as we look back at the passing of one year into the next, though the calendar and the clock tonight will make the change from 2023 to 2024 seem so black and white, for you and me, we know that what connect this current year to next the next year and what connects today to tomorrow, is Christmas time. Literally!!!! According to the church calendar, we are only in seventh day of Christmas. Christmas always rolls over from one year into the next. We begin and end each year with Christmas. For us, whatever troubles lay behind us and whatever trouble lie ahead, God’s peace in Christ—the Word Made Flesh—is what connects each and every year, and each and every day and every single moment to the next. We are reminded that when we are flying blind, God isn’t just flying off to the side of us at 500 feet. God is with us. He is our Savior. That’s what Christmas is about. And I suppose, then, that is what New Year’s is all about, as well.
I’ve said before that the psalms are meant to teach us how to pray. Well, if only all of our Mayday prayers throughout the year were prefaced with Psalm 29. If only we grounded all of our worries in the rock-solid confidence of David, who trusted in the sure and certain Word of God and the peace that it brings, a peace that surpasses understanding—for today and tomorrow, at the end of this year and the beginning of a new one. Indeed, how much more meaningful this makes the regular, generic holiday greeting: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
[1] New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/world/europe/08pilot.html
O Lord, open my lips... 