A truly remarkable prayer in pesukei d’zimra is Ps. 136, referred to as hallel hagadol, the “great praise.” It lists 26 wonderful things that G-d has done, like creating the world, rescuing us from Egypt, and bringing us through the wilderness. After each specific divine action mentioned, there is a consistent refrain: “ki l’olam chasdo” “for G-d’s lovingkindness endures forever.”
Almost all the actions refer to great events of the past. There is one exception: the second-to-last verse, that describes what G-d does right now. G-d “gives food to every living thing, for G-d’s loving- kindness endures forever.”
We who have grown up in a land of great abundance take simple sustenance for granted. It is hard for us to truly grasp that about 800 million people in the world face starvation, and even in America 55 million of our fellow citizens confront food insecurity every day. Simply put: feeding a world is a big deal.
Beside physical sustenance, of course, there is a need for spiritual sustenance. “Man does not live by bread alone,” (Dt 8:3) as we all know. The psalm reflects this, but in a rather hidden way. The psalm is 26 verses long. For the rabbis, the 26 verses represent the 26 generations from the creation of the world to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai (Adam to Noah=10, Noah to Abraham=10, Abraham to Moses=6). Before the Torah was given, one could only rely on G-d’s grace for a spiritual life. Thereafter, one could devote oneself to Torah study. That’s why, in the psalm, it mentions various events that took place in the desert, but not the revelation at Mt. Sinai (otherwise, a truly peculiar omission).
There is a deeper level still to this psalm. The 26 verses symbolize something else beside human generations. 26 is the gematria, the numerical value, of the four letters in G-d’s name (yud, he, vav, and then he again 10+5+6+5=26). The implication is that by examining and appreciating the world—the natural world, the historical world, the ecological world—and recognizing the lovingkindness with which it is saturated, we will come to an appreciation of G-d.
And that, in turn, will lead us to enthusiastically fulfill the final instruction of the psalm: Praise the Sovereign of heaven, G-d’s loving kindness endures forever.”