Psalm 119:88 Quicken me after your loving kindness; so shall I keep the testimony of your mouth. Judged by his own, and, so far as we know, only work, the author of this psalm was a man wholly devoted to God and the Word of God. His confidence in that Word or Law, as the true rule of human life, had been exposed to the severest trials. He had seen the wicked in authority, using and straining their power to oppress and destroy the righteous. He himself had been called to suffer a long agony of anguish and distress, in which his soul fainted within him, simply because he would obey the highest rule he knew. In the time of his tribulation he had besought the Judge of all the earth to do him right, to vindicate the Word in which he put his trust, to deliver him from his afflictions. And, though neither answer nor deliverance came, he held fast his integrity; he refused to forget the statutes for his obedience to which he suffered, or to relinquish his trust in the God who did not save him (S. Cox). But if such an attitude is to be maintained, the good man will find he has constant need of one thing - Divine quickening. It may at the first starting of a religious life seem as if our supreme need were the precise Divine help in every detail of life and relation; and so the prayers of young Christians are often exact and minute; they ask for particular things, and expect precise answers. Then they often mistake contingencies for prayer-answers, and are in peril of assuming that they stand in some special Divine favor. As experience enlarges, the one thing most impressed on the renewed man is the tendency of the Divine life in him to flag and fail. It is always dying down. And it always needs requickening. It comes to us gradually that God would rather leave us free in the movements of life, and expect to do the best work for us by "strengthening us with strength in our soul." And we at last see that this constant quickening and requickening and soul-vitalizing is precisely our supreme need. Even Christian experience can reach no higher prayer than this, "Quicken thou me." So prayer in the good man's life gradually loses its detailed character: it becomes simply a heart and life opening to the Divine quickening; and that is found to involve the supply of all our real needs. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth.WEB: Preserve my life according to your loving kindness, so I will obey the statutes of your mouth. LAMED |
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