Psalms for Today ~ How Long

 

Read Psalms 13-15

 

I love Psalm 13:2, How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?  It feels like the psalmist has read my journal!  To be sure, I read enough popular psychology to know that thoughts are just thoughts, and I don’t need to act on them.  But when the color commentary in my mind keeps shouts “Fire,” suddenly that thought doesn’t feel so neutral.  Hold this line with verse 5, “But I trust in Your unfailing love”.  What would that look like for you today?  What would you do differently today if the safety net of Sacred affection would catch you no matter what?  Don’t rush or race past this question, ponder prayerfully and then, join me as I try to live a response to that question.  As you continue to read the Psalms you notice how often there is a sense that some combination of Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort and the Kraken are conspiring together!  What do we do with the problem of evil?  So far, the psalmist seems to say, “We cry out to God.”  And, that in some way, somehow, God responds.  When has this been an experience for you?  When have you felt let down or left out from God’s quick text back to you?  Hold these holy questions as we continue to swim through the sea of the Hebrew’s hymnal in these days.  Amen

Psalms for Today ~ Side-by-Side

 

Read Psalms 10-12

 

But You, God, see/know/feel the trouble of the afflicted (Psalm 10:14); 

For the Lord is righteous, God loves justice; the upright sense God’s presence (Psalm 11:7); 

Help, God, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.  Everyone lies to their neighbor; they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts. (Psalm 12:1-2).

 

Today, I invite you to a prayer practice of picking out one meaningful line from each of the three assigned Psalms and putting them side-by-side.  One example is above.  Maybe you can find a thread or theme running through the three quotes that leap off the page onto your heart.  Or maybe there is tension between the three lines you are drawn to.  Why did you select these?  Don’t worry if you cannot reasonably, rationally explain what is stirring and swirling in your decision making.  Sometimes, as the cliché goes, the heart wants what it wants.  Sit with three phrases from the Psalms, you connect to, as you do trust that is enough.  Amen.

Psalms for Today ~ A Little Help Here...PLEASE!

 

Read Psalms 7-9

 

By now, you are starting to hear a rhythm in the cadence and chorus of the Psalms.  Psalm 7 cries out, “God, a little help here!  I am being chased by the enemies.” Wait, I wonder if sometimes the enemies are not only out there ~ but also in here ~ in my soul.  When I open the garage door to my soul, who knows what kind of wild creature might be living or luring or wander too close for comfort.  The Psalmist bravely and boldly, maybe with brashness, says, “Arise God in your anger and rise up against the rage of my enemies.”  How many times do we say these words, maybe not to God, but nevertheless I certainly pray them in a way.  And yet, I also know that I want mercy for myself and justice for others.  When I stumble and bumble, I long for forgiveness.  But if someone else does that thing?  I am right back to eye-for-eye justice with anger feeding and fueling my outrage.  To be honest, I get emotional whiplash when I start to sing Psalm 8.  After all the Psalms of help we’ve been reading and saying and singing, now we get to a psalm of wow.  (Remember the three most basic prayers/songs are help, thanks, and wow).  I encourage you to go outside and sing Psalm 8 to a tree or bird or grass; letting the soil beneath your feet meet the soil in your soul.   Finally, Psalm 9 offers a prayer of thanksgiving.  To be sure, the writer does still long for enemies being defeated and deflated and even destroyed.  How do we hold tension between orientation (the way we want to live) and disorientation (the way we actually live and how life keeps being beautifully tragic) and reorientation (the way we may not solve or sort out this mystery so we praise as a way of prayerful protest).  As the poet J. Drew Lanham says, “Joy is the justice we give ourselves.”  Joy (hope/love/peace) may not have external evidence, but very well may be a state in our soul.  Joy (hope/love/peace/grace) is not something we earn ~ it is who God is and what we might wake up to as we read the psalms each day.  May these words you sing sustain and strengthen you in these days.  Amen.

Psalms for Today

 

Read Psalms 4-6

 

I love the opening line of Psalm 4!  God, give me answers.  If Google can do it in the blink of an eye…if AI can summarize a sermon in a split second…if my microwave can cook a meal in two minutes, why, O God, is Your realm dragging its feet in delay?  Hold that question.  Pray that question.  Let that question sink into your soul, when you have wondered why God doesn’t swoop in and save you.  4:2 could be God’s response, as if God is pointing out that we (that is you and me) are not exactly punctual either.  I know I can push aside prayer time for more “important” work.  I know I can miss the color purple in the field because the news still has my brain in fight or flight.  I know I complain and get cynical.  Notice, how this psalm of soft verbs with lament ends again with lying down.  I wonder if the psalmist, like me, had insomnia?  If the psalms wrestled with God at 2 a.m.?  How I keep hungering for external evidence as some kind of proof that God does in fact care.  When you turn to Psalm 5, we hear echoes of Psalm 1.  There is a part of me that both is offended by how the Psalmist classifies and compartmentalizes people ~ that some are “wicked”.  And yet, so do I.  Read and re-read 5:7-8 as another echo of Psalm 1.  Only this time, the metaphor is not a tree but being in God’s presence.  No sooner to we think that things are going to calm down, then Psalm 6 comes rumbling and roaring in singing about how God rebukes the Psalmist.  The phrase, “How long, Lord, how long” is found in verse 3.  Waiting is not easy.  This is true today and was true when Psalm 6 was penned and put down those words years ago.  Remember that some Psalms are ones of orientation.  Other Psalms belt out feelings of disorientation/feeling dizzy/mind racing like a hamster on a wheel, like verse 1, feeling God has not only deserted the Psalmist but is demanding answers now!  I am moved by verse 6 in Psalm 6 ~ where are you worn out by groaning and moaning?  Where is your bed soaked or soggy with tears?  Hold the heartbreak that is honest meeting us in these days.  Psalm 6, a lament, does end with a hopeful note that the enemies will be overwhelmed.  And yet, when?  It is good to sing, “We Shall Overcome some day,” but as Rev. Dr. Ottis Moss asks honestly, “When is someday??”  Hold this question today letting it open the garage door to your soul in these May days.  Amen. 

Psalms for Today

 

Read Psalms 1-3

 

We leap and launch into the world of the Psalms, the Hebrew Hymnal this week.  In these pages you will encounter the passionate pleas and praise and painful prayers to God.  Remember, you are welcome to go at the pace that works best for you, if three Psalms are too many, slow down to the pace of your soul.  Remember, to read the psalms aloud ~ this helps you hear your own voice and let the words sink/settle/sing to your soul in these days in a different way than we normally engage things we read.  We read Scripture aloud every Sunday for this exact reason.  Finally, notice which words cause you to feel lost in wonder, love and praise ~ and which words feel like sandpaper to your soul?  It is okay if you read a Psalm in the coming weeks and think, “Meh.  I could take or leave that one.”  Not every psalm is going to cause your heart to pitter patter and your soul to shout, “Alleluia”! 

 

Read slowly, saving the syllables of the first three psalms.

 

This coming Sunday, May 18^th, I will preach on Psalm 1 ~ this is a Psalm of orientation.  Psalm 1 lays out a promise ~ that if you plant yourself in the soil of the sacred then you will be like a tree sipping on a cool stream every day.  Psalm 1 encourages us not to be trapped or tripped up by the voices of the so-called experts or those who write with eloquence dripping from every word.  Rather, “chew” or “meditate” or “root” yourself in Scripture.  That is what we are doing in the coming weeks.  We want to feast on the Word, sing these hymns together, and talk about what is happening within us as we do.  Now, I know you’d like to yell, “Objection, Wes!  I do my best and bad things still happen.”   Life is not a mathematical equation where good behavior plus reading your Bible daily plus avoiding jerks equals your best life ever.”  Exactly, which is why we turn the page to Psalm 2, where (according to the Message translation) the Psalmist sings “Earth-leaders push for positions, demagogues and delegates meet for summit talks, the God-deniers, the Messiah-defiers (say): “Let get free from God!”  The Psalmist goes on to say at first God is amused and then angry our human show of thinking we got this all planned out God.  The juxtaposition of Psalms 1 and 2 creates poetic and powerful tension.  We hear in Psalm 1 how we are to chew on the word and all will be well.  Well, then Psalm 2, interrupts and sings, except when leaders fail and falter to be adults in the room and remember who God is.  These words ring true in my soul today.  I sit with both these chapters as if the Psalmist just read the headlines with me.  Finally, Psalm 3 sounds like me when my anxiety takes the wheel of my brain.  “Um, God, a little help here?  Please!!”  Moments we are overwhelmed.  Did you catch that in verse 5, the Psalmist relaxes?  Not because all enemies are evaporated or eviscerated ~ indeed even in Genesis 1, there is a hint that chaos persists even after the seventh day.  God rests on that day and we are called to do the same.  Not because the to-do list has become a to-done list, but because rest is holy and healing, especially in the face of feeling overwhelmed.  May your soul find moments to chew on these words and close your eyes resting in God who isn’t going to quiz you on this, but longs for you to listen to the wisdom of these words.  Amen.

Preparing to Pray the Psalms

 

God, You belt out the Psalms with people and creation since the beginning of time.  God, You continue to write a holy harmony inside every cell of our bodies.  We pray for You to awaken our awareness that faithful people of all times and places have sought to share with You their praise, pain, petitions, and pleas for Your presence to inspire, interrupt, and infuse their lives right where they were.  People of all times and places have gone back to these words of the Psalms to embrace all the emotions of this fragile and fabulous experience of life.  May we, as people of this time and this place, open the pages of the Psalms to find ourselves afresh and anew.  May the coming days embolden us in unexpected ways.  May the coming days have moments when we feel Your embrace.  And may the coming days remind us that all of us (from the top of our head to pinkie toe) is enfolded by You.  Help us realize that in the pages of the Psalms we can glean more than we currently do from doom scrolling, constantly clicking, or binge watching.  Dare us, O God, to dive into Your lake of love that is recorded in the Hebrew Hymnal of the Psalms.  Help us find our unique voice to join the choir to share who these words are working in us and through us for the sake of the world You so love.  Amen. 

Preparing to Pray the Psalms

 

As we prepare to plunge and pray the Psalms in the coming weeks, perhaps my invitation to read all 150 is feeling a bit too much.  So, I have a wonderful alternative assignment for you from Eugene Peterson.  He decided to read five Psalms repeatedly. 

 

Psalm 3 is a Psalm for praying our troubles and tells when David fled from Absolm in fear!  Who/what/where are you singing, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen”?

 

Psalm 8 is a psalm of creation ~ to remember the web of mutuality that ties and tethers us to all that was, is, and will be in the worlds around/within.

 

Psalm 23 is a psalm to release our honest fears ~ the shadows and presence of evil.

 

Psalm 137 is to pray our hate ~ that faith is more than neckties and dress hats.  God longs for more than your carefully guarded public persona that you post on social media. 

 

Finally, Psalm 6 is to pray our tears as a cathartic release.

 

Perhaps this summer you want to return, repeat, replay and re-pray these five Psalms over and over again as a way to explore and examine the anatomy of your soul (see quote from John Calvin in Monday’s Morning Mediation).

 

A few more logistics as you prepare for Monday to launch your raft of life into the pond of the Psalms.  One, find a rhythm that works for you.  Some people will read a Psalm at breakfast, one at lunch, and one after dinner.  Some will read all three for each day at the same time.  Two, when you read the Psalms, read them out loud!  Just as we don’t listen to music from some objective, science-like, arms-length place (or at least I don’t!)  Just like I cannot hear the soundtrack of Wicked without joining in, the Psalms were meant to be heard in your ears ~ listening to the sound of your own voice.  Third, read the Psalms for each day slowly, savoring the syllables.  I encourage you to circle words/phrases that fascinate you and put a square around words/phrases that frustrate you.  You may want to draw a picture in response to the Psalm.  Or what get out your colored pencils to underline words/phrases of praise in green or blue; words/phrases of lament in red/purple (the color of Lent); words/phrases of thanksgiving in yellow/orange.  I encourage you to write down your first response to the Psalm.  Do not edit yourself, be honest and whole-hearted.  I do encourage you, if possible, to read each Psalm in two different translations side-by-side.  You can read the Message or Voice Version for a more contemporary translation.  You can read the King James for a translation that sought to be as close to the Hebrew as possible for the scholars of the day.  You can read an inclusive version of the Psalm.  Finally, feel free to re-write the Psalms when you feel particularly moved.  If a Psalm stirs in your soul, let your shy soul sing out with the words you long to express.  It is my prayer that engaging the Psalms will help us explore all that is within us and around us in these days.  Amen.