Praying the Psalms - April, 2009

Early last year, in preparing a pastoral prayer for Morning Worship at Salem, I decided to pray through the psalm for the day with its text spread out in front of me while praying. It was a moving experience to merge the psalm with the theme chosen from all the texts for that day, and to do so spontaneously in light of what the people and I were bringing to worship that week or facing the next. In light of that experience, and the many comments from others on how helpful it had been to them, I decided to adopt this practice as a weekly discipline for my own benefit.

In doing so, I am fully aware that I am only entering in on a historic practice, followed by God’s people in every age. My hope is simply to learn myself from the discipline how to better enter into God’s sovereign presence and be filled with his Spirit.

Week of April 5 (Palm/Passion Sunday) - Psalm 31:9-16

With the psalmist and our Lord we do have reason to give thanks to you, O God, for your steadfast love which does endure forever. Yet as we pray this week to open to us the gates of righteousness that we may enter through them and give thanks (118:19) we are deeply mindful of Jesus and all that lay ahead as he rode through the gates of your holy city. He who entered in festal procession already knew that in a very few days the praises being rendered him would fade into cries for his crucifixion.

Grant us the grace to remember his distress, spent with sorrow in soul and body over what lay ahead, his bones wasting away outside and his soul within. Help us to feel the scorn laid upon him throughout this week, the terror all around, lest we take too lightly his supreme sacrifice. And help us above all to remember well that everything he thus endured was for us and our salvation. Amen.

Week of April 12 (Easter) - Psalm 118

What a difference in the climate of our lives this day has made over time, Lord, and still makes--given the glad good news of Jesus' resurrection! Who could have believed that your steadfast love endures forever when your Son hung on a cross between two criminals? And who among us would have believed it when they laid him, under guard, in a tomb?
Once, and often yet being human, we are blind to your enduring grace and love. But now, because of that grace and love in raising your Son from the dead we can say that we see and do believe. Help still our unbelief that it is so. Open wide to us the true gates to righteousness that we may walk through them into the light of your new day. Help us to trumpet the good news thus set abroad in your world, that people both far and near lost in their sin and doubt may come as well to see and know that Christ is risen forever. Amen.

Week of April 19 (Second of Easter) - Psalm 133

We have heard, O God, that foir the early Christians the first day of every week was another Easter, celebrating the resurrection of your Son from the dead. We have also been told that it was their habit at the death of their brothers and sisters in the faith, when laying them in the soil of earth to say, "Even at the grace we sing our song!" How could they have done that apart from the experience of seeing and hearing about Christ alive?

Renew that faith in us, dear God, so far removed from New Testament times. Remind us in our moments of wondering that the good news is real and true, and that time and distance have no power over it. Ravish us with your Holy Spirit, until we ourselves run from every tomb that threatens our faith, full of the good news of Christ's appearing.

And gather us, Lord, into one with the forebears of our faith in every age that we may be one with you and with them, each ordained with the Spirit of new life in Christ, loife eternal, life without end, life forevermore. Amen.

Week of April 26 (Third of Easter) - Psalm 4

Our somngs of praise must now move on with the psalmist, dear Lord, to songs of intercession. There are so many both near and far from each of us who have no awareness of all that has happened in the life, teaching, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming again of your beloved Son! Help us to be servants of his good news, vessels of his Holy Spirit. You who have poured so much gladness into our hearts and minds, help us now to share all that day by day.

As the memory of your footsteps in our lives keeps creating faith in us, as well as hope and love, grant us not to hide from our responsibilitiy to share our faith, hope, and love with others. As you alone make us now to lie down in safety and sleep in peace, so may we hold others in our hearts as you keep holding us, that safety and peace may be known by them as well. Amen.