Read Psalms 107:1&2  We are reminded in verse 1 that we should thank the Lord because He is good and his mercy endures forever.  Forever is a long time!  Think of the biggest number that you can.  God's mercy will last longer than that many years!  Then verse 2 says that if God has redeemed us, we should praise Him.  Redeemed means to buy back.  There are stores called pawn shops.  If someone is short on money, they take something of value to the pawn shop and the people will give them a loan for that thing.  They have to pay the money back and some extra money, and then they can get their thing back that they pawned.  They have to redeem that thing.  God made us and He owned us.  But we rebelled against God and became the slaves Satan and sin.  God redeemed us, He bought us back from Satan, our enemy, and now we belong to God.  I would rather be a follower of God than the slave of Satan.

Read Psalms 104:24-26  These verses tell us that God is great and has made the huge seas.  It also tells us that God made the creatures in the seas, both great and small.  Verse 26 mentions leviathan as one of the creatures that play in the sea.  Leviathan is also mentioned in Job 41.  It is mentioned as a great and powerful sea creature.  This is probably the ancient dinosaur sea creature, the plesiosaurus. God made everything in the six days of creation.  He made the sea creatures on day 5 and the land creatures and man on day 6.  Wouldn't it be fun to swim on the back of a plesiosaurus?  I'll bet he could go fast!

Read Psalms 104:5-9  These verses that tell the story of the hydrological cycle.  That is a big word!  But it is really a simple idea:  God causes water in the ocean to evaporate up into the air as clouds.  When your mother makes tea, she puts a pot of water on the stove to boil.  When the water gets hot and begins to boil, you can see the water vapor rising up from the pot.  That is called evaporation.  Winds pick up the evaporated water from over the oceans and blows it over the land.  The evaporated water is called clouds.  When the clouds get over the land they rain and the water nourishes the land which helps our crops to grow.  The extra water then runs off the land into creeks, and then rivers, and then finally back into the ocean once again.  That is called the hydrological cycle. It is amazing that God knew all about this many many years before scientists figured it out!  God is much wiser than the scientists!  He makes it rain so that the crops will grow so that we can have food to eat.  What is your favorite food?  I like green peas.

Read Psalms 103:17  Do you remember mercy and grace?  God's grace is giving us something that we don't deserve.  What is God's mercy?  God's mercy is God not giving us the punishment that we do deserve!  One of the greatest things about God is that He is eternal.  Our verse says that God's mercy, His forgiveness, is eternal; it is from everlasting to everlasting.  Imagine you are standing on top of a huge mountain.  You look as far as you can see in one direction.  Then you turn around and look backwards in the opposite direction as far as you can see.  That is a picture of God's mercy to us!  Our verse says that God's mercy is from everlasting - as far as we can see in one direction, to everlasting - as far as we can see in the opposite direction!  But God can see really, really far in each direction!  That is how great His mercy, His forgiveness, is to us!  Let's stop and thank God for His forgiveness!

Read Psalms 103:13,14  Our verses today show us the kindness and love of God.  God knows that we are not as smart as He is.  He doesn't expect a lot out of us.  But He does expect us to love Him right back and to obey Him.  David uses a word picture here to show us with words what our heavenly Father is like.  David says in verse 13 that just like earthly fathers love and take care of their children, God loves and takes care of us.  As fathers, we don't expect our children to pay the house payment every month.  We don't expect our children to pay the water bill and the electric bill.  We don't expect our children to pay for the gas when we stop our car at the gas station.  But we do expect our children to obey us and to do what we tell them to do.  As fathers we only what what is best for our children, so we only have good rules to follow in our house.  God is our heavenly Father, and He knows us.  He knows that we are just humans.  We don't understand everything that He does - and we never will.  He knows that He created us just like He created Adam and Eve.  We need to remember that God made us, He owns us, and He wants what is best for us.  God knows what is best for us and we should obey Him!  We need to thank our heavenly Father for taking care of us every day!

Read Psalms 103:12  This interesting verse was written over 2,000 years before scientists knew that the earth was round!  The ancient men, including David, did not know that the earth was round. But God did!  And He is the one who told King David what to write!  The directions mentioned in our verse are called the cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west.  David knew these directions, but he didn't know what was special about them.  You see, east and west goes around the equator and are directions.  But north and south are exact points on our earth: there is a north pole and there is a south pole, and they are exactly 7,901 miles apart.  But east and west are directions, not points!  You can go east, and go east, and go east, until you go all the way around the equator, and you are still going east!  There is not a point on the earth that is called the east pole or the west pole.  Isn't it wonderful that God said that He would remove our sins as far as the east is from the west, and not as far as the north is from the south!  God has removed our sins so far that no one will ever find them.  I am glad that God is so great that He can actually forget our sins!  Isn't He good!  Get your mother or your father to show you a globe, which is a model of our earth, and explain our verse.

Read psalms 103:10,11  This psalm is full of the benefits that God gives to us as his children.  God's mercy is here in verse 10.  You may remember that mercy is God not giving us something that we do deserve, like punishment.  God gives us forgiveness instead.  David said that God did not deal with us after our sins, but He forgives us and gives us His grace.  Sometimes we don't understand why God is so good to us.  Verse 11 tells us that God is good because He is so much wiser than we are.  He is tremendously smarter than we are.  Verse 11 says that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so much greater is God's mercy to us.  Wow!  God is really way smarter than we are.  But the best part is that God's mercy is so much more than our human mercy and forgiveness!  Verse 11 says that as high as the heavens are above the earth, God's mercy is that great to us!  He is so forgiving and so merciful!  God's forgiveness is amazing.

Read Psalms 103:1&2  David commands us to bless the Lord in these two verses.  Bless means to thank the Lord or to say nice things about Him.  David says that we should bless the Lord in verse 1, but then he tells us why we should bless Him in verse 2.  In verse 2 David said that we should not forget all of the Lord's benefits.  Benefits are the good things that we get from someone.  God is good to us.  He gives us many things.  But we should not love God because of all of the things that He gives us; we should love God because He loves us and cares about us.  We don't love our parents because of the things that they give us, we should love our parents because they are our parents.  We should love God, not just because of the stuff He gives us, but because He is God and loves us so much!  What are some good things that God gives us?  What are some things that God does for us that we can't see or touch?  For example, we can pray to God when we are afraid at night and we are in the dark.  But that isn't something that we can see or touch.  What are some of the good things that God is to us?

Read Psalms 101:5-7  David was the king of Israel.  As the king, he needed to have people around him that could help him rule the country.  Our president is like that.  He needs good people to give him advice.  Advice means to tell someone what we think the best thing is to do.  But King David knew that there were wicked people who wanted to be around him just to have a good job or to wear fancy clothes and to be in an important place like the palace of the king.  So King David carefully watched his advisers.  Those who were trustworthy and honest, he listened to.  Those who lied and were proud and snooty, he got rid of.  The word slander is used in verse 5.  Slander means to talk about someone in a hurtful way.  We should be careful with what we say about someone.  The words that we use can hurt someone's feelings.  It may be better to think about saying something first, and then not say it than to say something hurtful and then to be sorry for saying it.  James 3 says that we should guard our tongue.  We need to be careful not to slander someone.  Then David talks about someone who works deceit in verse 7.  Deceit means to trick someone in a bad way.  David said that someone who used deceit would not stay near him.  King David wanted only honest and truthful advisers in his palace.  King David sounds like he was pretty smart.  How about you?  Do you have truthful friends or deceitful friends?  What kind of friends will help you to become a better person?  Let's take a lesson from King David.