Psalm 146

One of my favorite Psalms is 146. I feel like I say "one of my favorite Psalms is..." a lot. That is probably true thought. They all have so much meaning and emotion just seeping out of them. However, Psalm 146 has a special significance to me over the last few months. As I have been reading the Psalms I don't just sit back and pat the psalmist on the back for his beautiful language and great imagery. Instead, like I said before, the Psalms become my prayers. The hope of the psalmist becomes my hope. Consequently my hope in God changes the way that I live my life. I try not to live in fear or the shadow of oppressive systemic evils, but I try to live in the light of God's love who is Christ Jesus.

Psalm 146:8-9

The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

As this Psalm has become my prayer God has placed opportunities in my life to help live out the prayer. I feel like we should not only pray to God four help but to pray that God would use us in God's work. When this happens however, you need to expect and believe that God will answer your prayer and be ready to respond. The other day I had the opportunity to do just that. As I was walking down the street I was approached by a man outside of the post office. His name was Leon. As Leon began talking to me it seemed as though all my life slowed down and all else around me vanished. Leon was just asking for a quarter saying that he was hungry. I was able to give Leon a few dollars before I headed into the post office. The line was long, I did not stay long. As I came outside I saw Leon was still standing there and I remembered that I had found an Eat N Park gift card in my wallet just a day before. I asked Leon if I could take him to get something to eat. What do you know, there was an Eat N Park two doors down from the post office. I was able to sit and chat with Leon just for a bit before I went to a meeting. As I left, Leon was behind me eating his mid afternoon breakfast and I moved on to the rest of my day.

Even though I may never see Leon again, I continue to pray that God use me in his work to bring about his kingdom here on earth, always hoping to live in the light of what is to come.

Psalm 135

This morning I read Psalm 135. Within the Psalm lies some of my favorite language full of imagery. The Psalmist writes:

"The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of human hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear, and there is no breath in their mouths. Those who make them and all who trust them shall become like them." (135:15-18)

The Psalmist in this passage is just taunting those who worship false gods. He places right in front of them the downfall of their worship. These things that you worship, you made them! How can you worship something that is less than you, something that depended on you to come about, something that you have complete control over? This however is the question today as well though, isn't it? Forget about all of the material things that we worship in the place of God, put that aside for now, I am sure I will comment on that some other time. But for now, think about how we attempt to control God when we worship God. Think of all of the ways which we use the Bible to say what we want it to instead of letting the Bible instruct us. Think of all of our narrow views of a very deep and wide God. Think of all of the ways in which we try to make God ours and only ours when God created the earth and all that is in it.

Let us not try to control God, but to lift up our arms in surrender and let the one who created all guide us in all that we do.

Praying the Psalms

This past weekend I attended a conference on ancient scripture and early church fathers. To bridge the gap between the ending time Friday night at 9pm and the beginning time Saturday morning at 9am, we, as a conference, read through the Psalms. Split into two hour shifts and then individually taking fifteen minutes of reading at a time, the Psalms were prayed through one and a half times. While I did not spend the entire night at the church I did come early in the morning around 5:30 to listen and then helped read from 6 to 8am. Hearing the Psalms read in a quiet sparsely populated sanctuary was quite moving. It is hard to put words to, but the experience was transcendent but completely real at the same time. With the lights low and eyes shut in contemplative prayer and reading, minutes of prayer turned into hours of praise. While I listened to the Psalms being read, the prayers of ancient Jews became my prayers, their words my words, their anxiety, frustration, hopelessness, became my anxiety, frustration and hopelessness. But Psalm after Psalm, cry for help after cry for help, each Psalm found room for praise. In Psalm 109 verse 1 the poet writes, "Do not be silent, O God of my praise. For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues." In the same breath that the writer is describing his despair, he is also singing God's praise! How much we can learn from these ancient Psalms.

I have been reading two Psalms every morning and two each night for some time now. When I first began reading them they were something that I had to get through to get to the Gospel reading. However, reading the Psalms for me has become a beginning for the prayer that I carry with me throughout the day. The cries for safety in troubling times of encroaching enemies plays through my head as I walk to school and think of the many homeless that live around me who have no shelter, who feel vulnerable to enemies encroaching in on them at all times. I pray for the many unnamed homeless that they may find shelter in God, and that God may use me and the community to provide for their needs as well. While my daily troubles seem tame compared to homelessness, hunger, and war, none the less, reading the faith that these ancient Jews had inspires me to have a more real faith which cries out to God in my times of hardship and loneliness while at the same time proclaiming the praise due to God.

In an attempt to bring the Psalms more fully into my life as prayer I hope to reflect on the Psalms and my own prayers here.