Today I read Psalm 116 as part of my morning prayers. The practice of a Psalm a day began thirty plus years ago when I felt spiritually dry and desperate. Though I had been a believer in Jesus for a long time I really did not know how to connect with the Christ I was supposed to follow. One day, the first day of this journey with the Psalms, a memory of an ancient practice floated up from the depths to my consciousness. Why not use reading a Psalm every day as a starting point in this quest? Others had done so for centuries. Maybe it could work for me. So I began; reading, praying, reaching and hoping that somehow God would make my spirit come alive like the Psalmists’—you know, with a real emotional-physical-spiritual connection.
Determined, I began at Psalm one. It took all the way to Psalm 116 before my brittle heart broke open. That day I read:
I love the Lord because He hears my voice (a flood of tears burst loose!) And my prayer for mercy. (Thanksgiving for the overwhelming sense of His presence.) Because He bends down to listen, (Now I know that I know God hears and answers ME.) I will pray as long as I have breath. NLT (And on through the end of the Psalm.)
Here was the breakthrough that I had so hungered for, taking me by surprise, and more than surpassing any expectation. This was the passion of David and other writers of psalms who were unfettered in their worship and whose praises still resound in the created universe!
Day by day I read one Psalm or a portion of one until I finished Psalm 150. It seemed good to go back to the beginning and start again. Some of the Psalms seemed to speak for me; my heart soared or wept identifying with the ancient lyrics. Honestly, some of them annoyed me, even offended me. What kind of person sings “Dash their children against the rocks.”? There was, still is, much I did not understand. But, over time, with all the repetitions, reading other scriptures, history, different translations and paraphrases, I’ve come to realize that the Psalms, like all good poetry set to music, have a unique capacity to speak for the heart—mine, God’s, even a nation’s. Boring, you may say! Never! What the prophet said is still true. The Spirit of God is able to bring new things out of old. Just as sweet are the times when a reading brings a fresh reminder of a gem discovered in that same place years before.