This idea of portion is what lies behind the key verse of this stanza. The writer is saying that, like the Levites, he wants his portion of divine blessing to be God himself, since nothing is better than that and nothing will ever fully satisfy his or anyone else's heart but God himself. To possess God is truly to have everything.
It has always been natural for Christians to sing of what is lodged joyfully in their hearts, and their worship services have always been characterized by great hymn singing. Our contemporaries do not sing much today, though they listen to other people perform songs for them, and many of these songs are ugly. It is because life for our contemporaries is ugly. How beautiful are the hymns of Christians in ugly times like ours!
We can summarize this stanza of the psalm by noting that it deals with three kinds of love: 1) God's love for us disclosed in his provision of salvation, which the writer speaks of finding; 2) our love for God, which is implied in the matter of obedience; and 3) love of God's commandments, which results in our wanting to tell others about them (vv. 47, 48). Do you tell others about God's commands and God's love? It is a measure of your love for God whether you tell others or do not. If you love God and thus also love the Word, how can you not tell others about him?
We have already discovered that the author of this psalm is a practical man in the matter of his religion. So at this point he does not dwell at length on God's love itself but instead mentions two important results of getting to know God's love personally.
The first of these three stanzas concentrates on God's love, which is the most wonderful of his attributes and certainly a fitting place for the psalmist to begin. Surprisingly, it is the first stanza in which he speaks of God's love. And not only that, it is also the first stanza in which he speaks of God's salvation. The two words occur together in verse 41: "May your unfailing love come to me, O LORD, your salvation according to your promise."
