Walkin' in Sunshine

Psalms 97:10-12 Hate evil, you who love the Lord who preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked. Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Be glad in the Lord, you righteous ones; and give thanks to His holy name.

I’ve mentioned before that I love to read and study from the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible. While reading this scripture this morning in Psalms my eyes kept being drawn back to the underlined word ‘hand’. I thought I had a direction to go with the devotional this morning…except for that pesky word ‘hand’ calling my attention. The ‘holy tap on the shoulder’ comes when He wants it, not me.

Since it is a Key Word study Bible, the word was underlined for a reason; I flipped back to the reference materials in the back of the Bible to see what it had to say. There were many uses but the specific note for this scripture was hand, power. So we can read He delivers them from the (hand) power of the wicked. It goes on to elaborate that ‘hand refers to a literal hand, although not a human one’. He delivers them from the hand of the wicked then reads He delivers them from the power of the wicked in the spiritual realm. That made sense since the words preceding it were the Lord who preserves the souls of His godly ones;

How reassuring it is to know the hand of God delivers us from the hand evil. Light is sown like seed for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. This line brings a beautiful picture to mind for me. In Biblical days seed was sown by hand, not machines laying down seed in neat compact rows. It was literally cast out by hand in a sweeping motion to cover a larger area.  Just close your eyes for a moment and see our Lord in His radiant glory casting out His heavenly light all around and gladness raining down over us!

Evil is darkness and darkness cannot occupy light. So there we are, His people, shielded from evil’s power by His very hand, the same hand that sows His light around covering us. We are then given gladness for the upright in heart. If that’s not enough to make you want to twirl and dance in thankfulness, I don’t know what it would take for you!