Praying the Psalms - November, 2008

I decided several months ago 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 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 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 minister 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 November 2 (Twenty-seventh after Pentecost) – Psalm 107

How wonderful, Lord, to be reminded again of all the reasons we have to give thanks. The psalmist’s reminder to Israel is his reminder to us to trace the footprints of your goodness, not only in their history but in our own as well. From all the trials and perils of life you have delivered your people through the ages—“desert wastes,” “darkness and gloom,” “sickness though our sinful ways,” “business of the mighty waters,” “oppression, trouble, and sorrow”—yes, from all of these. It was not sometimes by our timetable, impatient as we are. Sometimes we still wonder if you will deliver in the future as you surely have in our past. Forgive us for our doubting, and help us in rehearsing your faithfulness with the psalmist to wait now with expectation before you. And as we wait, wherever we do so this week, teach us that remembering to give thanks is the best way there is to increase our faith. Amen.

Week of November 9 (Twenty-eighth after Pentecost) – Psalm 78:1-7

Paying attention, Lord, is not always easy for our children. How we long for them to know the juices that flow through our common inheritance for them. Why then, longing as we do, is it so hard for them to pay attention? Is it because we have failed in our longing to tell them often enough of your faithfulness, thus warming their hearts by the sharing of the sacred narrative—in your Word, in the history of our forbears, as well as in our own experience of you? Show us, Lord, how better to share with them how you have “established a decree in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel.” Help us to teach them so that they in turn may teach their children. Save both us and them from discarding our spiritual inheritance by being “stubborn and rebellious.” Make us, rather, in all things faithful. Amen.

Week of November 16 (Twenty-ninth after Pentecost) – Psalm 123

Accustomed as servants are to lift their eyes to their master, and maids are to seek the hand of their mistress, why do we hesitate so much to look to you, Lord? Can you help us to realize the foolishness of our ways in not spending more time in your presence? Have mercy upon us, who have “had more than enough of contempt,” and “more than our fill of the scorn of those who are proud and at ease.” Draw us to see you as your are, ever-present to those who seek your face, and when we fail in sensing you are available to us, help us all the more to look upward and inward until your mercy and love flow freely again to us and through us. Make us to be temples of prayer, of praise to you, intercession for others, and petition for ourselves, lest we lose the power only you have to offer us for living. Amen.

Week of November 23 (Christ the King) – Psalm 95

It is Thanksgiving time again in America, Lord. But surely our thanks to you and praise for you cannot be limited to one season or day. The psalmist invites us to “make a joyful noise to you, come into your presence with thanksgiving and praise.” And the reason he gives is that you are “a great God, who holds everything in your mighty hands.” As we worship and bow down, Lord, and kneel before you our Maker, we thank you that we are “the people of your hand and the sheep of your pasture.” Only remind us on this last week of the church year that you are also our Judge, and we dare not “harden our hearts as at Meribah, where our ancestors tested you.” You never lost sight of them when they lost sight of you and went astray for 40 years. O God, in your mercy, keep us thus from going astray, lest we like them miss out on your blessing. Amen.

Week of November 30 (First in Advent) – Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

On this “Stir Up” Sunday and week, as it has come to be known among your people, Lord, “come to save us.” Apart from you we are “the scorn of our neighbors,” who doubt that you exist and are therefore of no value to them. “Let your face shine, that we may be saved.” And “let your hand be upon the one at your right hand,” who you have told us will be sent by you to deliver us from all our fears. Lord, we wait upon you and him. And because we know you will be true to your eternal promise, we will; never turn back from you…. Give us life and we will call on your name.” We wait on you to “restore us, O Lord God of hosts,” and Scripture has taught us that we do not wait in vain. From you have all things come, and to you they will all one day return. Come quickly now, as wait, and deliver us from all our sin. Amen.