As Albert Einstein lay dying, he gathered a faltering breath and spoke final words. Are you curious to know what he said?  Nobody knows, since his nurse didn’t speak German!  It was probably only a critical correction to his theory of relativity or something.  Famous last words…  Often the last things that a person says come from a very deep place.

When Jesus died on the cross, His final words were a quote from a psalm written by David, roughly 1000 years earlier.  He said,

“Into Your hands I commit my spirit…”   (Luke 23:46; Psalm 31:5)

If you read the rest of that psalm, it is uncanny how perfectly it expresses what Jesus must have been thinking and feeling, a complex mixture of anguish and trust.  Jesus also quoted Psalm 22 on the cross:

“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34, Psalm 22;1)

Once again, David’s psalm eerily captures both the agony of Jesus,

“Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.” (Psalm 22:16)

and, later in that same psalm, His overriding confidence in God:

“You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” (Psalm 22:23-24)

Those who write songs frequently say they feel as though the words and music were already there, waiting to be discovered.  It must have been that David was so in tune with the heartbeat, the “words and music” of God, that the words he was inspired to write, were the ones spoken from the lips of the Son of God, moments before His physical death.

I’m not sure there is a lesson there, or any practical application.  But when I ponder that powerful connection between David and Jesus, it casts me into a deep, swirling pool of profound awe.  I hope it might do so for you, too.  I believe it is in such awe that we find ourselves more in tune with God’s “words and music.”

Quotes: The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.