Day 41: The Joy of His Return

Day 42: I Love the LORD

Can you visualize Jesus standing with arms outstretched and head turned upwards? Can you hear him say in front of his disciples, “I love my Father because he has heard my voice.” The Son prays; the Father responds. Love passes between them. Their love sources the whole universe. Father and Son ever reach and reply to one another. We live in the magnetic field of their eternal attraction. In the midst of our hurting, broken world, the incarnate Son lifts his heart to say, “I love the LORD!”

Day 41: The Joy of His Return

Throughout his life, this psalm would have uplifted Jesus in praise to his Father. In time, he would understand how it pointed toward his return in glory. He would have drawn hope from this future even on this day. For in Psalm 96, Jesus knows that the way things are right now is not the way things will always be.

Day 40: Our Great High Priest

Through his years of reading the Psalms in his prayers to the LORD whom he knew intimately as Father, Jesus realizes how Psalm 110 had been written for him! This prophetic song of David gives Jesus insight into his unique identity as a man born of Mary and the Son of God conceived by the Holy Spirit. He follows the Scriptural logic to know that only one person could be both the son and the Lord of David. Only one man could rule over Israel from the heavenly position of the Father’s right hand—Jesus himself.

Day 39: O Kings, Be Wise! King of Kings

We declare in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus even now sits at the Father’s right hand and will come to judge the living and the dead. This is fair warning to us and to the rebellious world to be wise. There is no future apart from this King.

Day 38: Lift Up Your Heads!

What a thrill it would have been for Jesus to pray this psalm in the days before he ascended. What anticipation of reunion! In the same prayers, he well might have rejoiced with Psalm 47:5-6: “God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises!”