By Brother Gary Pope-Sears

I thoroughly enjoy Psalm 148.  I recall being struck by this psalm in the winter of 1978 after a huge blizzard struck our seminary in Dayton, Ohio.  Classes were cancelled, but those who resided on campus had a chapel service in the basement of one of our residence halls.  The psalm for the day was 148 and verse 8 really hit home that morning: …fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!  The Lord was certainly speaking to our circumstances that day!

Many years later as I meditated on the psalm, I came to notice and appreciate the progression of praise that occurs as one reads through the verses going from the praise of divine agents, to the praise from astral regions, to the praise of the beings and forces upon the earth, to finally the praise from the people of the earth—all the people!

This glorification of God begins high and lifted up—if you will—and works its way down to you and me right where we are and then kind of rebounds from us heavenward: Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven (vs. 13).

With broad brushstrokes, the psalmist paints a scene of cacophonous praise rising up to God: from the people and the critters, from the plants and the planets, all of it bookended by the prompt to, “Praise the Lord!”

This is a great psalm to imagine your way through: see all the entities, hear the ways they praise our common Creator.  It lifts my spirit to do so—I think it will lift yours as well.

Beginning in a chapel service on a snowy day, continuing to whatever the weather when I’m reading it, Psalm 148 always encourages me to join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love (Thomas O. Chisholm).