Sunday, January 13, 2013

"Glory!"

We read responsively through a psalm each week in the service I lead at College Wesleyan.  Every once and a while, we'll read something that triggers a memory from my revivalist/camp meeting past.  Today it was while reading Psalm 29:9:

"The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, 'Glory!'"

The literary context of this verse has the psalmist thinking of God as he hears the thunder.  E.g, "The God of glory thunders... The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars... The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire" (29:3, 5, 7).

The old timers sometimes would shout, "Glory!" in a worship service (i.e., in the "temple") when they got blessed.  I bet it came from this verse.

My thought process was thus like this as we read through the psalm together.  First, "I bet this is where that practice came from."  Then, "They must have really read the Bible back then" because, lastly, "I've never noticed that about this psalm before"--at least not with it sticking...

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