66¹

"Come and see what God has done. . ."ps

In the context of Israel's worship one finds a continual and recurring theme of remembering and recalling all that their god has done in the process of salvation history. This occurs on many different levels, from the personal and intimate to national history and the miraculous. What I found to be of special note on this topic, particularly in Psalm 66, is how the story of salvation and the activity of the divine among humanity is told in both historical and present form. In other words, the past and the present are told in one breath.

This is due to the fact that the biblcal portrait of heavenly activity is seen as a single and unified event. The past serves as a heritage for the faith that we display in the present. In turn, our present activity will be the heritage upon which the future will be built.

And whenever we remember the past it actually becomes part of our present experience, which means the telling and retelling of God's activity allows it to live and impact and save today. "In the cultic representation the 'there' and the 'once' of history becomes the 'now' and the 'here' of the [salvation-history]; it becomes the eternal presence of the rule of God which is the true object of the cultic ceremony and of the hymnic praise of the tribes of the covenant people."*

So if the 'there' and 'once' become the 'here' and 'now' it is our responsibility to make the 'here' and 'now' become the 'everywhere' and 'tomorrow.' Our story must be continually present.




*Artur Weiser, The Psalms OTL (Louisville: WJK, 1962), 470.