Weekly Meditation: “Bless the LORD, O My Soul” – Psalm 103:1
This year, one of my spiritual goals is simple but deeply needed: to read, pray, and worship consistently. Not in a rushed, box‑ticking way, but in a way that anchors my days in God’s presence.
Recently, I came across a list of weekly meditations on hebrews4christians.com, and it felt like the perfect invitation to slow down and sit with Scripture, not just read it, but live with it. So I decided to choose one verse each week, letting it become the first word of my morning and the quiet companion of my day.
This week’s verse is:
“Bless the LORD, O my soul;
And all that is within me,
bless His holy name.”
Psalm 103:1
Sitting With the Verse
I began the week by “picking at the verse,” so to speak, turning it over, looking at the root words, letting it speak to me slowly.
Psalm 103 opens with David calling his whole self, mind, emotions, body, and spirit, into wholehearted praise. It’s not passive worship. It’s a deliberate stirring of the soul to remember who God is and respond with gratitude.
A few reflections that stood out to me:
- “O my soul”: David speaks to himself, reminding his inner life to turn toward God.
- “All that is within me”: worship isn’t compartmentalised; it’s total, embodied, sincere.
- “His holy name”: God’s character, reputation, and covenant faithfulness.
The Hebrew Root of “Bless” — בָּרַךְ (Bārach)
The word bless in this verse comes from the Hebrew root ב־ר־ך (B‑R‑K), which is connected to the idea of kneeling, bending the knee in reverence, humility, or gratitude.
From that posture comes the fuller meaning:
- to bless
- to speak well of
- to praise with reverent gratitude
- to offer oneself in devotion
It’s not about giving God something He lacks. It’s about bowing the whole self in recognition of who He is.
A beautiful nuance: the same root forms the word בֶּרֶךְ (berekh), knee.
So when David says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul,” he is literally calling his inner being to bend low in worship, to take the posture of someone who recognises God’s goodness and responds with wholehearted honour.
Psalm 103 is a psalm of remembering: God’s compassion, forgiveness, healing, redemption, and steadfast love. So this opening command becomes a call to:
- humble remembrance
- embodied gratitude
- whole‑being worship
What It Means to “Bless the LORD”
As I meditated on this verse, I began to see that blessing the LORD is not a single action; it’s a posture of life.
🌿 1. Bending the inner life toward Him
Lowering pride. Softening the heart. Choosing humility.
🌬 2. Speaking well of Him
Blessing is verbal and relational, remembering His works and naming His faithfulness.
💛 3. Offering Him your whole inner being
Thoughts, emotions, desires, imagination, memory, will, all turned toward Him.
🔥 4. Choosing alignment
Agreeing with who He is:
“You are holy. You are good. You are worthy.”
🌌 5. Remembering
Forgetfulness is the enemy of blessing.
Remembering is the fuel of blessing.
🕊 6. Responding
Blessing is lived in trust, obedience, rest, gratitude, and turning back to Him.
In one sentence:
To bless the LORD is to bow your whole inner life before Him in grateful, remembering, wholehearted praise.
A Gentle Realisation About Gratitude
As I carried this verse through the week, something unexpected surfaced:
I say “thank you” more to strangers than I do to my Abba in heaven.
We thank people constantly for holding a door open, passing us something, sending an email, serving us food, or replying to a message. Gratitude flows easily in everyday interactions.
But when I looked at my own rhythms, I realised how often I forget to thank God for the very things I depend on most:
- Provision: I forget to say grace before meals.
- Rest: I forget to thank Him before bed.
- Protection: I forget to thank Him for getting me safely through the day.
- Breath and life: the first gifts of every morning.
It’s not that I’m ungrateful, it’s that I’ve grown used to His goodness. I take for granted what He faithfully provides.
A More Intentional Morning
As I drove to work one morning, I found myself quietly naming the things I’m grateful for almost without planning to. I thanked God for the gift of my children, remembering how I prayed for a girl and received a girl, then prayed for a boy and received a boy. I thanked Him for getting me safely to work, for a job that’s only fifteen minutes away, and for the roof over my head. It wasn’t polished or structured; it was simply awareness. And that’s when I realised this verse has been nudging me toward a gratitude that isn’t forced or formulaic, but conscious. A deliberate kneeling of the inner life. I don’t yet know how this will look in my everyday rhythms, but I can feel something beginning to shift.
All week, I kept coming back to a worship song that echoes the heart of Psalm 103. It helped me keep the verse close, almost like a musical reminder to “bless the LORD” with all that is within me. I’ve shared it below if you’d like to listen along.
Closing Thought
Psalm 103 begins with a call to the soul:
Bless the LORD.
Not because God needs our praise, but because we need the remembering.
We need the posture of humility.
We need the alignment of the heart.
We need the gratitude that softens us and draws us back to Him.
And maybe, just maybe, blessing the LORD begins with noticing the everyday gifts we’ve stopped seeing.
The Eleven One 
Leave a comment