I have been meditating on Ps 136 this past weekend. The RSV begins: O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever–or as Derek Kidner points out, the better translation is: for his love has no end. This phrase repeats itself after every verse of the psalm–for his love has no end, for his love has no end, for his love has no end. Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, an Orthodox pastor, has a wonderful commentary on this phrase:
Psalm 136 insists, literally in every verse, that the root of all God’s activity in this world, beginning even with the world’s creation, is mercy–hesed. This mercy is eternal–le’olam–“forever.” Mercy is the cause and reason of all that God does. He does nothing, except as an expression of His mercy. his mercy stretches out to both extremes of infinity. “For His mercy endures forever” is the palimpsest that lies under each line of Holy Scripture. Thus, too, from beginning to end of any Orthodox service, the word “mercy” appears more than any other word. The encounter with God’s mercy is the root of all Christian worship. Everything else that can be said of God is but an aspect of His mercy. Mercy is the defining explanation of everything that God has revealed of Himself. Every Orthodox service of worship, from Nocturnes to Compline, is a polyeleion, a celebration of God’s sustained and abundant mercy. What we touch, or see, or hear, or taste–from the flames that flicker before the icons and the prayers our voices pour forth, to the billowing incense and the mystic contents of the Chalice–all is mercy. Mercy is the explanation of every single thought that God has with respect to us. When we deal with God, everything is mercy; all we will every discover of God will be the deepening levels of His great, abundant, overflowing, rich and endless mercy. “For His mercy endures forever” is the eternal song of the saints. (Christ in the Psalms, p. 272)
Witnesses to Hope 