"The Lord will give His people strength,
and with peace bless them all."
Psalm 29:11 (Scottish Metrical Psalms)
These words came with such force to Mum in December '16, when she was down in a Glasgow hospital having some tests done. Mum had had some rather unpleasant tests and was, without doubt, anxious about their results. Indeed, the result of these test was what gave us all the news in that first week of January this year that she had terminal cancer.
However, during that day or two in Glasgow, the Lord spoke these words into her heart. She wasn't even aware she knew a Psalm with these words, and to begin with, she had no idea where the words were to be found.
But she soon found them....
...and circled them in her Bible.
* * *
Mum read from this Bible every day, and the Psalms (as you can see!) were frequently visited.
See all the notations at the end of each Psalm? As she systematically read through the metrical Psalms, she drew a wee tick - or number, or line, or circle, or stroke! As you can see, Mum was pretty much running out of marks to use, so frequent was her readings of these wonderful words from God's Word.
Here were some of her favourites:
These words:
"And by my God assisting me,
I overleap a wall"
(Psalm 18:29b)
were made very precious to Mum both before she first sat at the Lord's Table for the first time, and then before an operation she was having in 1987.
* * *
Now, do you remember me posting in the past about my Mum's auntie Catriona? Read here to get a fuller story of her emigration, and her eventual passing in BC, Canada. Well, these verses were made very precious to Auntie Catriona in her loneliness and her heartache.
"Teirgidh iadsan 's thèid iad às
ach mairidh tusa, Dhè:
Seadh teirgidh iadsan 's gabhaidh seach
mar eudach sean gu lèir.
Feuch caochlaidh tu mar thrusgan iad,
is caochl'ear iad gun cheist'.
Tha thus' a mhàin gun chaochladh ort,
's do bhliadhnaidh buan am feast'.
(Psalm 102:2627, Gaelic)
Mum has these circled in her Bible too, with a reference to Auntie Catriona. It's quite a thought that they are now together.
Quite a thought, indeed.
* * *
One more:
Since Mum became ill, these words at the beginning of Psalm 77 became a constant favourite too. She asked me to read them to her time and time again over these past months. She would say, 'Read them in Gaelic. They have so much more power'.
"Dh'èigh mi ri Dia gu h-àrd le 'm ghuth,
dh'èigh mi le m'ghuth gu h-àrd;
Is thug e, 'nuair a ghlaodh mi ris,
sàr-èisdeachd dhomh gun dàil."
* * *
On the night Mum passed away, as we left Bethesda Hospice in the early hours of the morning, these were the words that hit me so strongly:
The storm is changed into a calm
at His command and will;
So that the waves, which raged before,
now quiet are and still.
Then are they glad, because at rest
and quiet now they be:
So to the haven He them brings,
which they desired to see.
Psalm 107:29, 30
When I looked through Mum's bible, she had already circled these words. They'd obviously meant something to her (at different times - notice the different pens used), and now they'd spoken to me about Mum.
God's Word is so precious, and surely the Psalms are truly an 'anatomy of the soul', as John Calvin called them. How many souls - in times of great joy and in times of great sorrow; in times of thanksgiving, and in times of pleading - resort to the Psalms and find comfort there?
We are still in times of sorrow, of grieving, of pleading, and yes of thanksgiving too. Whilst Mum has few of these emotions now, we still crave comfort and encouragement from the Psalms she knew and loved so well.
