Psalm 130 - First Look

This is a good Psalm for me now, I don’t really know why. I just like it. Maybe because it talks about hope.

It almost outlines itself, speaking of mercy, forgiveness / fear, waiting, and then hope. The combination of forgiveness and fear seems a strange one. Why do we fear the Lord because He forgives?

I like that he uses ‘I’ and ‘soul’ almost interchangeably in verses 5 and 6. I don’t think of them that way, I wonder if I should? The repetition of v6 seems noteworthy, I can’t recall many times that such blatant repetition is used.

Finally the hope of v7-8. I might define hope as the belief that the future will bring meaning to the present, and to live in hope is to have the strength of our belief outweigh the strength of our experience. As such, hope blooms the most vibrantly when the present is the most despicable(1). Conversely, hope is the most difficult when the present is the most pleasant, because we can deceive ourselves that this is enough.

(1) I should check this out with Lewis’ view of time in Screwtape Letters, where he essentially says that as Christians, we should dwell most on the present.