There are moments when words in English simply don’t do justice to the various emotions that we attempt to convey. One of the best examples of this fact appears in the German word, Schadenfreude, which is best described as the sense of satisfaction that one might feel at the misfortune of another person—truly an emotion that most of us have felt, while also being one that cannot be adequately described in a single English word.
This psalm opens with another such phrase in the original Hebrew, Hallelujah, which we normally translate as “Praise the Lord.” Yet it has a slightly different meaning, of being a command that we should offer praises to Yahweh, which is the name of God as given by Him to Moses. In the Jewish tradition, rather than speaking God’s name, the people will instead say the word Adonai, which means “my Lord.” As we read through the pages of the Old Testament we see the word LORD printed in all capital letters; these are the places where the name of God appears. There is something incredibly dear to my heart in remembering that these places are not simply “the Lord,” but rather “my Lord.”
God desires that we know Him deeply and intimately. Our Creator is not an impersonal deity who formed all that is in existence and simply walked away from any involvement with it. Rather, God is actively involved, seeking us, working for a good that we cannot always see and understand yet we nevertheless seek. Even more, the Lord desires that we would seek Him, that we would strive to live in relationship with Him, that we would be His people, and He would be our God. When I see “the Lord” in the pages of Scripture, I am always reminded of Paul’s words from Romans 8: “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”