The psalms remind us of our need to gain fresh perspective through worship. In this psalm (another psalm of ascent), we are reminded of pilgrims heading up to Jerusalem. This psalm reminds us of both those serving and worshipping in the Temple. The writer seems to see this happening as people are praising the Lord. 

It is important for us to take time to be together in worship. We need to look up and gain the right perspective in a world which is full of so many distractions. Worshipping God often involves singing, and also our whole lives. Physical expressions of worship can be helpful – to lift up our hands (v 2) or to kneel in worship or close our eyes. 

We are blessed as we seek our God, ‘the Maker of heaven and earth’ (v 3). As we worship, he draws near to us and wants to bless us. As disciples of Jesus, we also encounter him in our worship. Today, we need to choose to turn away from our phones and other distractions, and to worship. Turn your eyes to Jesus.

‘Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.’¹

Psalm 134 is the last of the fifteen songs of ascents (see 24 January). The ascent songs that began in distant, hostile Meshek and Kedar² end, fittingly, in Jerusalem, the pilgrims’ longed-for destination. The psalmist commences with a call to ‘Praise the Lord’ (v 1) and concludes with a blessing (v 3).

The ‘servants’ who ‘minister by night in the house of the LORD’ (v 1) are probably the priests and Levites on night duty in the Temple – tending the altar fire and keeping the sanctuary lamps burning through the night.³ To ‘stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord … [and] do the same in the evening’⁴ was also a specific duty assigned to the Levites. In the Old Testament, the same Hebrew word (abad) is used both for worship and service. Thus, praise is not confined to the lifting up of hands in the sanctuary (v 2) but extends to the offering up of all areas of our lives as ‘a living sacrifice’.⁵ In God’s eyes, the sacred-secular divide simply doesn’t exist. As Paul urges, in 1 Corinthians 10:31, ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.’

Praise is not the special preserve of priests, however. These ‘servants’ may also have included pilgrims keeping a Passover night vigil as a way of honouring the Lord who ‘kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt’,⁶ to make them his own people. Our redemption as God’s people is ‘to the praise of his glory’.⁷ Once all other aspects of its earthly mission are accomplished, the church will live on, for it exists for the ‘praise of his glory’. We are a people of praise. Our praise will never cease or diminish; rather, it will be purified and magnified!

‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years …  we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, / than when we’d first begun.’⁸ Start rehearsing!

¹ Rom 12:1, The Message  ² Ps 120:5  ³ Lev 6:9; 24:3  ⁴ 1 Chr 23:30  ⁵ Rom 12:1  ⁶ Exod 12:42  ⁷ Eph 1:14  ⁸ Anon, addition to J Newton’s ‘Amazing Grace’