when the wind passes over, it vanishes, and its place remembers it no more.For the wind passes over it, and it is gone. Its place remembers it no more.For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; And the place thereof shall know it no more.
3 sermons cite this verse
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The Lord is filled in kindness, above the kingdom of God. The wonderful Mississippi short story writer Eudora Welty once wrote a memoir. It was called One Writer's Beginning. And in her memoir, she used this fascinating image. She said that writing about her own life thoughtfully and reflectively was like riding on a mountain railroad at night. It was only when the train went around a bend, around a curve, and threw suddenly a light on what had passed that she was able to see a mountain of meaning rising, rising still along the path that she had traveled. There is, I think, just such a moment of retrospective illumination in this beautiful 103rd Psalm that we just heard. Most of the psalm is an exuberant song of blessing and praise. The psalmist's cup is full and flowing over. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless God's holy name. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is the steadfast love of God. …
This is God's word. Back in March, we looked at this passage, we looked at the whole psalm, but we looked at the beginning of it and it just killed me not to be able to go to the meat of it. And today we are. Last week, we laid down a thesis, and that thesis is going to serve us for a series of studies on the nature of God, who God is. And the thesis goes like this. In action movies, especially with the kind of movies we see in the summer, in action movies, all the players are cartoon characters. They are one-dimensional. They're either heroes or villains or they're stereotypes of some kind. They're not nuanced. They're simple and they're one-dimensional. And as a result, there's no personal engagement with them. I mean, we're not supposed to have personal engagement with them. So when they're blown away, we just applaud it to special effects. It doesn't bother us, see. There's no personal engagement with them. They're one-dimensional cartoons. …
Where their possessions lie." They even imagine that they are captives by the waters of Babylon and they hang their harps upon the willows, for they fear there are many years of banishment still before them. Yet the King's messenger is already on the way with the summons to bid them to appear before Him very soon! Even if the call does not come to some of us at once—if the Master has need of us in this world a little longer—how soon our mortal life must end! What is our life? "It is even a vapor, that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." But does the brevity of life cause us any anxiety? Oh, no! "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens"! And when once we reach that blest abode of all the saints and look back upon our earthly experiences, we shall feel that any affliction we had to endure was light, indeed, compared with the unutterable bliss that shall then be our eternal portion! We are pilgrims bound to Zion's city and we necessarily have certain privations and difficulties—but when our journey is at an end— "One hour with our God …