Psalm 119:65

You have treated your servant well,
according to your word, LORD.

I pause to note a milestone. This is the first verse in the new section of Psalm 119. We’re in the section in which each verse starts with the ninth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Teth. That is the first letter of “TOV” which is in turn the first word in the verse in Hebrew.

In the previous verse we were talking about God’s grace filling the entire world, and I think, by extension, the entire universe. Our universe has grown from the time it was conceived of as “the heavens and the earth.” Our concept of God needs to come up against the vastness of the known universe and realize how much more there is as we expand our ability to observe.

God is good. Just what do we mean by that? We really don’t have a measure of the goodness of God. I assume that God is better than I can actually conceive. But that is a statement that is by nature not subject to demonstration. I don’t have a range of gods to compare and say, “This one is the greatest. By nature, I can do nothing about it if I decide that God is not good, because God will still be God, the creator of that inconceivable universe.

Here is where I rely on experience. Experience that happened a long time ago and is still remembered is called tradition, and the Bible is very old tradition indeed. My own experience parallels that of the psalmist. It parallels that of many friends. But it is fundamentally mine. My faith in God is informed and in some cases directed by external data, but is not fundamentally a rational conclusion because it very simply can’t be.

So I say that God is good, more an act of acceptance and praise than a rational assessment to be laid alongside other rational assessments.

It is this experience that should be the content of our testimonies. It is something we should be willing to talk about. We spend a great deal of time trying to prove miraculous events in previous millenia, while frequently forgetting to talk about what has happened yesterday.

I like Psalm 78:

¹ Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
    incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
² I will open my mouth in a parable;
    I will utter dark sayings from of old,
³ things that we have heard and known,
    that our ancestors have told us.
⁴ We will not hide them from their children;
    we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might
    and the wonders that he has done.

⁵ He established a decree in Jacob
    and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
    to teach to their children,
⁶ that the next generation might know them,
    the children yet unborn,
and rise up and tell them to their children,
⁷     so that they should set their hope in God,
and not forget the works of God,
    but keep his commandments;
⁸ and that they should not be like their ancestors,
    a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
    whose spirit was not faithful to God.

Psalm 78:1-8 (NRSVue)

Notice the passing on of God’s deeds to the next generation. This is how we teach God’s goodness. It’s not just a catalog of data. It’s much more. It’s the collected experience of the community.

How will you add to the story of faith today?

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

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