Praying the Psalms - May, 2008

Week of May 4 (Seventh of Easter) Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

To come from life as it is for us to you as you are, O God, is seldom easy. Is that because what we are in ourselves is so unresolved? Sometimes, like the psalmist, we address you in the third person: Let God rise up, let his enemies be scattered; let those who hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, let the wicked perish before God. But let the righteous be joyful; let them exult before God; let them be jubilant before God.
Why are we so often disjointed in our prayers if not that we come to you disjointed in our souls? C. S. Lewis once called you “our still point in a turning world.” We know that in our heart of hearts, for we can recall in our own lives, as the psalmist did, that when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain…your flock found a dwelling in it; in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.
Why do we keep forgetting your goodness in times past, your clear footprints and shepherd’s care over the years? Why are we so often frazzled in our spirits, out of touch with the things that remain? Why so soon in Eastertide have we already forgotten Easter?
Is that why life in your church is so important, the opening and re-opening of your word, the rehearsing again of biblical story to remind us of your place in our own?
Ought we to think of you more often in the third person, not as One simply at our beck and call, but as the “Awesome One” you are, in whom alone all the disjoints of life can be healed, and all its hurts and self-centeredness resolved? Rise up, O God, to save and bring us home. Amen.

Week of May 11 (Pentecost) Psalm 104:24-35

Lord, it is Pentecost again, that season when the Holy Spirit descended on your people in New Testament times, even as Jesus had promised before ascending into heaven. Fresh new winds blew then on scattered believers come together “with one accord in one place,” and people of different tongues were joined to each other as they heard of your power in their own language and felt it in their own being.
Coming from you and the Son, surely the descent of the Holy Spirit was not a wholly new thing, was it? Wasn’t it rather, like the resurrection of Jesus, the coming together of many things portended in the long sacred history of your presence among your people? The psalmist knew it from afar, even if only in promise: O Lord, how manifold are your works! …These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them they gather it up; when you open your hand they are filled with good things…. When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.
In every age since Father Abraham, your people, led by your hand, have done more than they knew, and experienced more than they could ever have imagined. Let it be so among us again, Lord. Send your Spirit to unite us. Gather your people from their scattered ways and tongues, that in fresh new demonstrations of your power we may draw the whole world to your side. Amen.

Week of May 18 (Trinity, First after Pentecost) Psalm 8

The wonder of nature, O God, especially at this time of year, is something to behold. How majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark….
Thus do we experience you in things both great and small. Heavens above and creatures all around witness to the Sovereign One you are beyond us. We can neither find our way to you nor escape from you by devices of our own. Your world, both within and around, invites us rather into mysteries and glories far beyond our ken.
When I see the heavens on a starry night, and contemplate their vastness, I wonder with the psalmist, what are human beings that you are mindful of them? And when I think on the intricacies of our inner world—how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, even in our mother’s womb—I am equally lost in wonder, love, and praise.
Why have you crowned [human beings] with glory and honor? Why have you given them dominion over the works of your hands? Why have you put all things under their feet…? The grace of that, and trust exhibited, not to mention the love displayed, is amazing!
Make me a blessing, Lord, a vessel fit for your use, this week and always. Drive home to all your people everywhere both the majesty of your Being and the urgency of your call. Amen.

Week of May 25 (Second after Pentecost) Psalm 131

“A Song of Ascent,” we read. “Of David.” A king, he, of the royal line from which Jesus descended, fully human and fully divine. How could it be, Father, that Jesus, so different from that line as we have come to know it, could still be identified with it?
In three brief verses, Lord, my soul is refreshed. Not motivated, as so much of life seeks to motivate me—“be this,” “do this,” “follow here,” “go there,” –but simply refreshed, put at rest, at peace, content.
I address you with the psalmist: O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, my soul is like a weaned child that is with me.
How wonderful, O Triune God, to find such rest in this restless world. St Augustine said it well, in the crucible of his own experience: ”My soul is restless until it finds its rest in you.”
No wonder the psalmist called on all of Israel to hope in the Lord, from this time on and forevermore. Can I do less in my own walk than issue the same call for the sake of your people everywhere? Still my soul this week before you, and use the stillness, invaded by your Spirit, to awaken in others a whole new hunger for the things that remain. Amen.