"In the Psalms, I reveal what life is like for the person who lives in the storm with his eyes fixed on Me. As you read the Psalms, hear Me say this:
"Face the hard questions that life requires you to ask. Gather with other travelers on the narrow road, pilgrims who acknowledge their confusion and feel their fears. Then, together, live those questions in My Presence." (66LL)Here we are together, asking the questions and trying to acknowledge our confusion and fears. I hope that the Psalms will help us as we try to express these back to God as David did. The psalms are like David's personal journal, a glimpse into his inner life that kept him focused on God in the middle of his crazy life.
"For everything that happened in David's life became prayer, became the occasion for listening to and answering God." (Peterson, Praying with the Psalms)Today, my occasion for prayer is the overwhelming number of pieces of my life: a morning counseling session that resurfaced some old wounds; a brief respite in the sun at the pool with friends; the mundaneness of laundry and paying bills; a conversation with my teenage daughter about her upcoming birthday; being overwhelmed by the news of God's complete provision for our mission trip; a friend asking an honest question about prayer. These are some of the pieces of my day and here is my prayer through the psalms:
Listen, God! Please, pay attention! Can you make sense of these rambling, my groans and cries? King-God, I need your help. Every morning you'll hear me at it again. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on your altar and watch for fire to descend. (Psalm 5:1-3)God, I need You to know these crazy, disjointed parts of my day. I need You to make sense of the wounds, the conversations, the daily tasks. I lay them all out before You and wait to know if they are pleasing to You, if You will send down the fire and receive them as an offering of worship to You.
In response, David reminds me who God is,
But you'll welcome us with open arms when we run for cover to you. Let the party last all night! Stand guard over our celebration. You are famous, God, for welcoming God-seekers, for decking us out in delight. (5:11-12)Looking forward to our journey through the psalms as we honestly seek Him and as He decks us out in delight!
P.S. Did anyone notice Psalm 1:3, "always in blossom"...catchy title for a blog, don't you think?
2 comments:
Loved today's post, Staci!
Glad to be done with Job (I'm not the Eeyore type, I guess), but I'm a little overwhelmed by how to approach the Psalms. I'm more of a news-story kind of girl. I like narrative and facts. Poetry and raw emotion is rather daunting to me. I think this book is going to be a challenge for me.
But Eugene Peterson motivated me in his Intro the the Psalms:
"I wanted to provide men and women access to the immense range and the terrific energies of prayer in the kind of language that is most immediate to them...I continue to want to do that, convinced that only as we develop raw honesty and detailed thoroughness in our praying do we become whole, truly human in Jesus Christ, who also prayed the Psalms."
I'm going to learn A LOT from the Psalms!
A privilege to pray through the psalms with you. Psalm 4 jumped out at me: "God, give me answers. God, take my side! Once, in a tight place, you gave me room; Now I'm in trouble again: grace me! hear me!" The theme of my life right now: Tight Places---I even dreamed last night I was trapped in a glass telephone booth. Then, God gives me room to breathe. Then, here comes Trouble again. Happened again tonight on way home from Lampasas. I bump up against other people's sin and end up in my own. I love Psalm 4:5: "Let your heart do the talking." Don't keep others in the courtroom---don't build a case! God puts my life back together every night. So, what do I need to let go of, God?
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