Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!
Psalm 34.3
The way David’s expression comes across in english might raise a question in our minds – just how would we go about doing this? Just how would we magnify the Lord? Is he not beyond magnification?
Wishful thinking?
Where might we obtain theological lenses or devotional mirrors big enough to magnify Him? The Lord is an infinite being. Is the Psalmist engaging perhaps in hyperbole or wishful thinking?
Actually the Psalmist is spot on. He realises more than most of us that The Lord’s person, character and works are intrinsically great things and there is nothing he can or would do that can make them any greater.
Altered thinking
The lenses and mirrors within a microscope or telescope do not enlarge the object of their focus in a material way. The size of the thing being magnified does not change, it is our perspective which changes. As the lenses and/or mirrors get to work, the true wonder of the object comes into our field of view. We behold things which otherwise we might not have seen. We observe characteristics which otherwise we might not have noticed. Our intellect and our hearts are stirred – not by an intrinsic change in the object – but in the perspective which enlargement affords us. The more we study the object, the more cause there is for wonder, the more cause there is for awe. The longer we stay, the more we see and the more we see, the more we are compelled to share our findings.
This is where the Psalmist finds himself. Enthused with his own findings which he goes on to speak of in the Psalm, he is compelled now to share these with others and encourage them to do the same.
Faith-full thinking
It is a happy thing to magnify the Lord; for as he becomes bigger in our heart’s appreciation, other things which had been in focus now are forced to the edges. Eventually all objects in our peripheral vision vanish and only he is in focus. This was Mary’s experience in Luke 1. Gone are the fears from the angels salutation, her soul did magnify the Lord. Her own hearts’ enjoyment spilled out into the world through song as she ‘made’ the Lord great.
Far from being wishful thinking then this is in fact, faith-full thinking. The truth is, the Lords name bears far more frequent scrutiny than it receives, far more space than it occupies, far more time than it fills. Exalt his name we should, magnify we must, until the earth [is] filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2.1).
Readers will forgive any naiveté present within the writer’s comments about optics. Hopefully the gist of things is still clear.
