I was bought up on a large square rigged sailing ship called the Golden Plover and much of my youth was spent sailing across the world’s oceans from one country to another. I can remember one day climbing up the tall foremast of this ship and finding that, when we were in the troughs of the waves, that I still could not see over the top of the swell. The ocean is possibly the most fearful natural phenomena to have to submit to. Even a tall ship like ours became like a cork bobbing helplessly in the vast heaving waters. In the old days ships like ours used to carry a ‘sea anchor’ that would be let out to drag from the stern to keep the ship from running askew on the wave as the it surfed down the face. In the midst of the ocean we are like a speck of dust in a hurricane. This is the way the psalmist describes his feeling before God in this psalm. It is the attitude of reverence which is the foundational attitude of the covenant relationship (see the article provided here on ‘fear and reverence’). The fear of the Lord, says the proverb, is the beginning of wisdom. From Genesis to Revelation we are called to fear God and to revere him. To fear God is to acknowledge the sheer majesty and might of God. Yet even these adjectives as they are used in the psalms are really desperate attempts to express the inexpressible. God is infinite, eternal and holy. It is impossible to know God and not fear him. He who worships God without reverence worships a false god. This psalm expresses this attitude. The psalmist draws on the metaphor of the ocean because it is the closest thing that he can find to describe how he feels as he comes before the one who is ‘clothed in majesty.’ He says, ‘the seas have lifted up their voice, the seas have lifted up their pounding waves’ . . . But God is infinitely greater even than the power that is expressed in the mighty waves of the ocean. Here is a magnificent declaration of reverence. Here is the praise of one who has been confronted by the living God. He rejoices with trembling with the fear that drives out all fear as he is confronted with something that is infinitely more than his finite capacities can bear.