Praying the Psalms - September, 2008

I decided recently in preparing a pastoral prayer for Morning Worship 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 the day, and to do so spontaneously in light of what the people and I were bringing 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 have decided to adopt this practice as a weekly discipline for my own benefit—both to let the Psalms shape my praying and to offer up, in that context, what I and those to whom I am ministering are facing and feeling week by week.

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 September 7 (Seventeenth after Pentecost) Psalm 149

The psalmist’s counsel to “Sing to the LORD a new song” is interestingly tied to his call to “Let Israel be glad in its Maker,” and “the children of Zion rejoice in their King.” One is reminded, Lord, of Israel’s cry in exile, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? (137:4). Well, the same way, evidently, we sing it anywhere, since the whole world is yours, and praise can come out of exile as well as good fortune.
This psalm even suggests that high praise to you, dear God, “be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples.” Why? “To bind their kings with fetters, and their nobles with chains of iron, to execute on them the judgment decreed. This is glory for all his faithful ones.”
Lest one get lost in the logic of it all, the point is clear. To sing to the Lord is new song can never be an exercise simply in duty. If I am to sing to you, O Lord, not least a new song, I must lose myself in the magnificence of who you are and the joy of becoming ever more obedient to your will. May it be so!

Week of September 14 (Eighteenth after Pentecost) Psalm 103:1-13

Why is it, Lord that this psalm is such a comfort not only to me but for those to whom I minister in times of stress and illness? Why, indeed, if not that in spite of the worst that life can throw at us, your mercy and love abound. Deep down within us, no matter our momentary doubts, we know that you offer to forgive all our iniquities, heal all our diseases, redeem our lives from the Pit, and beyond all the rescuing even crown us with steadfast love and mercy.
Who is like unto you, O Lord? There is no other god before you! All the others deal with us according to our sins and repay us according to our iniquities. But you remove all these from us; “as far as the east is from the west, so far do you remove our transgressions from us.”
Help us, Lord, not to presume on all this, but to accept it in awe and thanksgiving, that we may help others to see their lives and live them out in that divine/human perspective which only you can supply.

Week of September 21 (Nineteenth after Pentecost) Psalm 145: 1-8

“I will extol you, my God and King,” the psalmist begins. And he is obviously saying that, as one commentator puts it, “as part of the cult community [that] responds with its unbroken hymnic tradition to that perpetual presence of the divine salvation” into which the poet wants to incorporate his song.
We, with the psalmist, must learn ever to sing in community, Lord—the community of your people, gathered not only in our place and time but in all ages before us and yet to come. We are not strong enough to sing your praise by ourselves. The fount of our song is in you and in all the people who belong to you—past, present, and future.
Unless we fill our spirits with “your mighty acts … the glorious splendor of your majesty … your wondrous works … your awesome deeds … the fame of your abundant goodness … [and] your righteousness,” what shall fuel our singing?
Inhabit my spirit, Lord, with your Spirit, and join my voice to the voices of your saints in every age that together we may laud your name and proclaim your grace to the nations.

Week of September 28 (Twentieth after Pentecost) Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Today, O Lord, and all throughout this week, my heart is for my children and their children, even to a fourth generation. In fact, it is for all children, everywhere in this world, so many of whom have no one to tell them the stories that make up your Story, the Story of Redemption.
You know in your providence I often feel like a propter at an opera, waiting to share what someone may have forgotten along the way of all God has done and yet offers to do for them. Thank you that in the short space of this longer psalm that Story is rehearsed once more for all who would take the time to rehearse it.
How wonderful that so many in our time are recovering their sense of ancient/modern worship, in which the praise of God is tied, as it was in biblical times, to the whole history of redemption in this world.
Inspire us all, Lord, to dig more deeply into the storehouses of redemptive history that alone can both deepen our sense of wonder and generate our praise. Forgive us for insulating ourselves in our own little worlds and missing the glory of your presence in your whole universe of time and space.
And above all, Lord, help us devotedly to share it with the children, lest they be robbed of their true inheritance among the saints in light. Amen.