Today’s Lectio Divina: Excerpts from Psalm 36. (MsgB)
God’s love is meteoric, His loyalty astronomic,
His purpose titanic, His verdicts oceanic.
Yet in His largeness nothing gets lost;
Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.
How exquisite Your love, O God! How eager we are to run under Your wings,
To eat our fill at the banquet You spread as You fill our tankards with Eden spring water.
You’re a fountain of cascading light, and You open our eyes to light.
Back in 1964, Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke starred in the classic movie, Mary Poppins. One of my favorite songs from that film was the fun tune, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
The composers, brothers Richard and Robert Sherman, came up with this over-the-top word as they searched their creative brains for a fun way to define things in life that are so large and stupendously wonderful that one, short little word just won’t do it justice.
One website I found defines the word this way:
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is something great, fantastic, or extremely cool. A word to describe something that surprises or delights you. A statement of great exclamation. A detailed analysis of each part of this 34-letter word suggests this definition: Atoning for educability through delicate beauty.
The roots of the word have been defined as follows:
- super- “above”
- cali- “beauty”
- fragilistic- “delicate”
- expiali- “to atone”
- docious- “educable”
According to Mary Poppins and her friend, Burt the Chimney-Sweep, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is defined as “something to say when you can find nothing else to say.”
Somehow, as I read Psalm 36, I’m thinking King David might have really enjoyed using this 20th century word as he attempted to describe his Creator-King in this beautiful song he wrote 1,000 years before the birth of Christ.
Meteoric. Astronomic. Titanic. Oceanic. Exquisite. A fountain of cascading light.
As I see it, earthly words just fail to embrace the fullness of life found in our out-of-this-world God. So, try our best, we will never be able to pen in this lifetime, lyrics that can adequately define the greatness of our Creator-King.
So, in the meantime, we can have great fun, like others have done, creating new words that attempt to describe the large-ness, the majestic-ness, the overwhelmingly huge-ness, the warm-lovingness, the un-explainable vastness, the fragrant aroma-ness, the redeeming graceful-ness, the intimate close-ness…the…the…supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-ness of our brilliant God!
Wow. My brain hurts from trying to find the right words!
Maybe that’s why so many of the Psalms end up just stating the obvious?
The Lord is good. And His mercy endures forever.
Amen. And amen.
My prayer: Words fail me, Father, to express the greatness of who You are. So since earthly words are woefully inadequate, forgive me when I falsely believe that I’ve conquered my pursuit of Your greatness. Keep me forever searching for more creative ways to define You and Your amazing love. For Your name’s sake. Amen.
My questions to ponder: What needs to change inside me so I can return to a child-like wonder of my Creator-King? What is needed to kick-start my creative juices when it comes to my exploration of the unsearchable depths of the love of God?
So what is God speaking to you today as you ponder the Psalms?
Over a 50-week period, you and I will take a deeper look at The Psalms: God’s Songbook of Prayers. In order to keep all the blog sessions organized, we suggest you bookmark our Contemplating the Psalms home page for ease of use. Keep in mind that one of the best ways to explore the on-going applications of this blog series is to walk alongside a biblically-based, Christ-centered spiritual director who is familiar with how to make material like this part of your overall spiritual formation in God. Many of our directors in our Sustainable Faith-Heartland network are available to companion you in your journey with Jesus. Click here for more info.
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