Psalm 80:3
Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
This verse is like the chorus of the psalm, repeated between each section. So, we'll come back to it a few times, and consider something different each time we read it. Today, we'll focus on the idea of God's face
shining on us.
Do you remember 'The blessing' - an online music video which was widely circulated during Covid lockdown in the spring of 2020? It's a song, recorded by different Christians, beautifully edited together to show the unity
and hope that we all share because of Jesus.
Some of the words come from Numbers 6, when God tells Moses how the priests should bless the people of Israel: "The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace."
That's the blessing that the psalmist asks for here. He
longs for God to smile on his people again. I love how personal this image is.
Back in Numbers this blessing comes in the middle of a long list of instructions about how the people are to approach God, and the offerings they should bring. It would have been easy for them to get so caught up in the instructions that they started to think that their relationship with God was purely transactional, like the currency exchange window at the Post Office. 'I bring my offering to God and swap it for his favour and forgiveness'. Entirely forgetting that all the offerings take place in the context of a personal covenant in which God has become their God and they have become his people.
It's the same for us. We rejoice in 'the swap' of the cross,
by which Jesus' death brings us forgiveness. But it isn't an impersonal transaction. Rather, it's the doorway to a personal relationship with God. Apart from Jesus, God's face would be turned away from us in judgement. Because of Jesus, God's face is turned towards us in love and blessing. His face shines on us, and we get to live in that light. Let's thank him for that today.
