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.
October 4 (Eighteenth after Pentecost) - Psalm 26
From any purely human point of view it would seem so. Yet as we know in our own experience of faith, there is forgiveness with you, real forgiveness that blots out all our transgressions and washes us whiter than snow. Can it be, Lord, can it be?
What is integrity, really? Can it be claimed apart from your forgiveness and enabling power? Surely not! Yet given that forgiveness, which is total and real, ought we not ourselves be bolder in you. David seems hardly to be boasting. He seems rather to be yearning, realizing that maintaining integrity requires him to "stand on level ground ... in the great congregation" of your people.
Help us, Lord, not to vacate your house and our place among your people. Remind us through David that only in walking in faithfulness to you can we claim anything for ourselves. Amen.
October 11 (Nineteenth after Pentecost) - Psalm 22:1-3
This, too, Lord, is a psalm of David, and the mood swing from last week's is enormous. It reminds us that spirituality, which is walking in the light of your countenance, does not always leave us feeling pleasant or buoyant in spirit. Sometimes, like David--indeed, like our Lord Jesus himself--we feel forsaken, far removed from your blessing, not least when in obedience to you we find ourselves suffering.
Crying out for deliverance day by day in such times we are puzzled by your silence and in the night we too find no rest. Even those to whom you send us, who you place in our way, seem more to disdain than honor us. Is there no cure?
None, it seems, other than confessing our faith in you as the holy one, "enthroned on the praises of Israel." O Lord, teach us to cry out from life's struggles with Job that "even though he slay me, yet will I trust him," and with our Lord Jesus, "Into your hands I commend my spirit."
Help us to reference our places in life not by our meagre understandings of what they ought to be. Grant us rather that cosmic sense of positioning that sees every lesser trial in light of your eternal purpose. And when we tremble with fear, remind us that in every age past you have delivered your people, even as your promise in your time and way to deliver us as well. Amen.
October 18 (Twentieth after Pentecost) - Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 38c)
Every reminder of you, Lord, sets us free from the tyranny of our fears and sufferings. Who you are eternally and all you have done and continue to do in this universe of space and time refreshes our spirits. It also reminds us, given your sovereign authority and power, that all of nature and all of life exists within the boundaries of your will, which cannot be broken.
This week help us to lift our sights to the glories of your nature and work. Open our eyes that we may see, as the hymn writer has put it, and our ears to hear. Then open our mouths to sing your praise lest we waste precious time and energy focusing too much on ourselves.
Remind us that you are also Lord of the night and its darkness, and that nothing we fear in the night will ultimately be able to separate us from you.Surely you are pleased when we praise you. Help us with the psalmist to do so this week with all our hearts. Amen.
October 25 (Twenty-first after Pentecost) - Psalm 34:1-8 (19-26)
To be reminded, Lord, of your goodness and power, is to be blessed time and again. And as we remind each other from the storehouses of sacred memory throughout history and our own life span we are doubly blessed.
We are reminded of the ancient Te Deum Laudamus (Hymnal, No. 896) in which we are gathered together with all the saints of God in praise of you: the glorious company of the apostles. the noble fellowship of prophets, the white-robed army of martyrs, and the holy Church today throughout the world. And with that awareness we ourselves are inspired by recalling how "you took our flesh to set us free ... and overcame the sting of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers."
We also are reminded that "you are seated at God's right hand in glory," and "that you will come to be our judge. Come then, Lord, and help your people ... and bring us with your saints to glory everlasting." Amen.
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