Psalms
When I last preached, two weeks ago, Saul was being sent off to Tarsus by the brothers in Jerusalem and then followed a period of peace in the account of the church in Acts. It seems a good time to take a break from Acts and move on to another part of the Bible. We will come back to Acts next spring.
As I thought the last few weeks about where we might go, I kept coming back to the idea of preaching from Psalms. This is my ninth summer in Rabat and three of those I have been away in France. That leaves six summers for me in Rabat and for half of those summers I will have preached from the Psalms.
Why do I keep coming back to the Psalms? Is it because I like my catchy sermon series title – Psalms for the Psummer? I do like the title but it is more than that.
I preached from the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134 in the summer of 2000. In the summer of 2005 I preached from various psalms and finished the series with Psalm 151.
Today I want to pick up and preach from Psalms 152 and 153.
Now of course you realize there is something wrong with this. There are only 150 psalms in the Bible so what are Psalms 151, 152 and 153?
And the answer is that these are three psalms I have written. Now I am not proposing my psalms be added to the Biblical record – I am not that presumptuous – but there is great value in writing our own psalms. I finished the series on Psalms in August 2005 with an encouragement to write your own psalm. I want to begin the series this summer with the same request. I would encourage you to write several psalms this summer, perhaps to write one each week.
What I find appealing about the psalms is that they take me deeper emotionally. I love learning more about God and how God has worked in history. I love getting a clearer picture of the history of Israel and the church. I love understanding better the theology of our faith. This is all very satisfying for me, but I need to have a deeper heart connection with God and this is what the psalms do for me.
When I write a psalm, it takes me deeper into my heart and helps me make a more intimate connection with God.
The Psalms express the emotions of the heart and that is quite a wide range of emotions. The psalms that are recorded in our Bible were the outpouring of the heart of men and perhaps women in Israel. Some were personal, some were ceremonial, some were ritual. When we read the Psalms, we reach into our emotional nature.
Because the Psalms are an outpouring of the heart, Christians have used them as an aid to praying. There are many spiritual disciplines that pray through the psalms, allowing them to speak into the heart of the worshiper.
Why should you write your own psalm?
We get caught up in patterns of relating to God. We have a set way of reading the Bible and praying. We may even have a schedule we follow. Maybe we read three chapters of the Old Testament and two chapter of the New Testament each day so we finish reading through the Bible in one year. Maybe we read just a chapter a day. Whatever we do, we easily get caught in a rut and find ourselves spinning the wheels but going nowhere.
When I preach from Paul’s letters my head is filled with his theology and I am trying to understand how our faith works. When I preach from the Gospels or Acts I am trying to paint a picture of what is taking place so we can learn at a deeper level about who Jesus is and how the Holy Spirit works.
This is all good. There is nothing wrong with this but sometimes we need an introduction of creativity into our pursuit of God and interacting with the psalms is helpful way to do this. If you have never written a psalm, or if it has been a long time since you wrote a psalm, you might find this a helpful exercise. Writing your own psalm can help you get out of the routine of your seeking God and take you to a new path to God.
Writing your own psalm can help you break through a barrier that has closed off your spirit to the presence of God. Particularly if you have a strong emotional feeling such as anger, or depression, writing a psalm is a wonderful way to break free from the hold that emotion has on you.
How do you begin to write a psalm? I made a copy of something I found on the internet that may be of help to you. This has been passed out with the bulletin this morning and you can read through that this week. You may find some of what is written helpful.
The first place to start is to sit down where you will not be disturbed and think. Get quiet and ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” This is the most critical part of writing a psalm, identifying what it is you are feeling.
Being angry, frustrated, happy, grateful, worried, apathetic, depressed, hopeful, loved, bitter; all these are good places to start with your psalm. In fact, whatever you are feeling is the best place to start when you write your psalm. A psalm is not written with your head but with your heart.
Make a series of notes about what you are feeling. Describe the feeling you have. Use a picture to describe your feeling. “I am happy like a kite soaring in the wind,” or “I am angry like a tornado about to rip apart a house in its path.” Psalm 42 begins with this:
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
What are some other ways you can describe how you are feeling? Explore the depths of your feeling. Find a number of ways to describe your feeling. You may not use them all, but they will help you to articulate your feeling.
Then try to explain why it is you are feeling this way. If you are happy, what has happened that made you happy? If you are worried, what is it you are worried about? If you are bitter, what happened that made you bitter?
If your psalm is a happy or joyful one, let it erupt into a wonderful praise of God who has blessed you.
If your psalm started out with worry or anger or depression or apathy, work your way to the point that you have expressed the feeling as completely as you can and then sit. Put the pen down and think.
Where has the expression of your feeling taken you? Think through other times in your life when you have felt this way? What happened in those times?
Can you think of how God was faithful to you in the past when you felt this way? Remember those experiences. Describe them.
If you have expressed fully the way you are feeling, you will get to the point where you will be able to surrender to God and submit to his will. This will take you from anger or bitterness to recognition of God’s goodness to you and you will be able to end in praise.
Some Psalms do not end that way. So if you write a psalm and get to the end and you are still feeling angry or depressed, then write another and try to more completely express what it is you are feeling.
Let me present some cautions for you as you write.
1. Be honest about how you feel. The less honest you are, the less helpful this exercise will be to you. Don’t hold back. Don’t be afraid that someone else might see what you wrote. After you write the psalm you can always destroy it. No one needs to see or hear what you have written. This is an exercise for you and not necessarily for the rest of the world.
Sometimes it is difficult to be honest with yourself, so start with what you are feeling and make sure you get to the bottom of that feeling.
2. Let what you write be a prayer to God that allows you to feel heard. The benefit of such an exercise is that you clarify to God what it is you are experiencing and that helps you to know you have been heard.
3. Don’t be afraid of hurting God’s feelings. God has big shoulders. When the Sons of Korah wrote Psalm 44 and said this,
Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.
24 Why do you hide your face
and forget our misery and oppression?
do you think God was hurt by their accusation that he was sleeping on the job and had forgotten about their suffering?
God can handle whatever it is you are feeling so get it out and put it down so you can begin to deal with it. I am saying this over and over again, but it is critical. Until you fully express what you are feeling, in all honesty, you cannot move to an authentic relationship with God. God is not unaware of the intensity of your feeling. Writing down what you feel is not telling God something he does not already know. Writing down what you feel is helping you to be honest and more open to God.
4. You don’t have to share with others what you write, but when you write your psalm and you have been true to your feelings, chances are your psalm will speak to others in a similar situation. So don’t be afraid to share what you wrote with some friends.
Over the Sundays of this summer we will take a look at different kinds of psalms. Some are full of praise, others express severe depression. Some are incredibly angry, others are repentant. The psalms express a host of emotions and that is why it is helpful for us to write our own psalms.
If you go to the doctor and tell her you have a headache, she will tell you to take two aspirin and call her in the morning. If you come to a spiritual doctor he might tell you to write two psalms and call him in the morning. So write a psalm or two this week. It will be good for your soul.
When we were on vacation last week, I wrote some psalms. Let me share two of them with you. The first one is titled, Sick.
Sick
You ask me what room of a building I would be
and I tell you I would be the infirmary.
My energy has left me, my sinuses ache and my eyes water.
It hurts to swallow and I cough without rest
I try to sleep at night but keep waking myself with bouts of coughing
So I lay on the couch and ask, “If you really are God, then heal me.”
And immediately I realize the arrogance of my request / demand
Do I really want to decide the existence of pre-existing, all powerful God
by whether or not my throat feels better?
I am at the broad extent of my egocentrism
You created, in less time than it takes to say the “u” of universe,
all the matter and space in our universe
From a single point of nothing, in an instant, you created the vastness of space
Over time your creativity took the atoms of your creation: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
plus small amounts of sulphur, phosphorus, calcium and iron
and from these you created
fish, flowers and insects in such variety that we still cannot catalog them all.
From these you created us, the only species that contemplates and reflects and asks, “Why?”
The only species that asks you to prove you exist by healing a sore throat.
Given who you are, does it really all come down to whether or not you heal my throat and head?
I am embarrassed. Forgive me.
I am your devoted, and often times stumbling servant.
You give and take away, but blessed be your name.
Whether my life is easy or hard, blessed be your name
Whether I get what I want or continually suffer the lack of what I want
Blessed be your name
Lead me into your purpose for my life.
I am yours, healthy or sick.
I am yours.
The context for this psalm was that I began feeling sick on the Friday before we left for vacation and it got worse over the week. I don’t like taking antibiotics so I fought this for seven days but when it was not getting better, I gave up and went to the pharmacy. The last three nights of our vacation I was able to sleep at night without coughing and waking myself and all who could hear me through the night, but that coughing and sore throat and lack of energy lasted a week and a half.
The experience that triggered this psalm was lying on a chair one morning and praying. I was entertaining doubt that God really exists and asked him to prove his existence by healing my throat.
So I began by talking about how I felt. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I described my symptoms and then I got to my prayer for healing, putting God’s existence on the line.
You ask me what room of a building I would be
and I tell you I would be the infirmary.
My energy has left me, my sinuses ache and my eyes water.
It hurts to swallow and I cough without rest
I try to sleep at night but keep waking myself with bouts of coughing
So I lay on the couch and ask, “If you really are God, then heal me.”
Immediately when I prayed this, I was aware of how silly a prayer it was.
And immediately I realize the arrogance of my request / demand
Do I really want to decide the existence of pre-existing, all powerful God
by whether or not my throat feels better?
I am at the broad extent of my egocentrism
I wanted a way to express the power and greatness of God and thought of a book I was rereading. Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is a very readable history of scientific discovery and I liked it so much when I read it a couple years ago that I decided I would read it again.
In Hebrews 11:2, the writer described the different ways we have faith and he wrote:
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Scientists have discovered that from a single point of nothingness, the universe was created in what is called the Big Bang. Every 10-42 of a second, that is a decimal point followed by 42 zeros (.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001), an incredibly small number, the universe doubled in size. The whole creation of the universe with all the matter in it and all the laws of physics and chemistry were created in this instantaneous explosion and the whole event took 10-30 of a second (.0000000000000000000000000000001). Scientific notation does not communicate well in a psalm so I said that it took less time to create the vastness of the universe than it takes to say the u of universe.
You created, in less time than it takes to say the “u” of universe,
all the matter and space in our universe
From a single point of nothing, in an instant, you created the vastness of space
I don’t know about you, but that takes my breath away. I went on to talk about the creativity of God in creating all we see.
Over time your creativity took the atoms of your creation: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
plus small amounts of sulphur, phosphorus, calcium and iron
and from these you created
fish, flowers and insects in such variety that we still cannot catalog them all.
This is kind of like a Job experience when God answered Job with all his questions of suffering and evil by asking him numerous questions of creation. The awesomeness of God is the best answer to any of our questions.
This led me then to a fuller understanding of the absurdity of my prayer.
From these you created us, the only species that contemplates and reflects and asks, “Why?”
The only species that asks you to prove you exist by healing a sore throat.
Given who you are, does it really all come down to whether or not you heal my throat and head?
And I finished the psalm with my submission to God who knows what I cannot know.
I am embarrassed. Forgive me.
I am your devoted, and often times stumbling servant.
You give and take away, but blessed be your name.
Whether my life is easy or hard, blessed be your name
Whether I get what I want or continually suffer the lack of what I want
Blessed be your name
Lead me into your purpose for my life.
I am yours, healthy or sick.
I am yours.
The second psalm I wrote I titled On Vacation
On vacation
“My heart is not proud, O Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.”
I know that, but I cannot restrain myself
Like a spider out of control, I shoot out my webs in all directions
trying to bring under control all that is around me
So I am tired.
I try to do more than I can
I try to do what is not my job to do
I try to do what is impossible for me to do
I sit by the pool, looking out at the sea, on vacation
My eyes drift to a distant village along the beach
I begin to pray, expressing concern for the people living there
and then out of the blue a word comes to me
“Just relax.”
And then another
“I’ll take care of the world.”
A sense of relief
and then wonder
God cares enough about me that he wants me to relax?
He who never sleeps or slumbers wants me to relax?
The irony abounds
“I’ll take care of the world.”
Who takes care of the world all the time if not God?
Did the angels laugh along with God when he said that to me?
“Who do you think you are Jack, God?”
A joke at my expense, but not cruel, a loving joke and I laugh along
Gentleness behind that joke, recognizing my weakness
not the “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” asked of Job
but a gentle, ironic joke
that set me free
and let me know I was loved.
The context of this psalm was being on vacation and the experience that triggered this was when I was lying on a chair, looking out at the sea and at a distant village down the beach. I began to do what I always do, praying and trying to figure out God’s purposes for people, in particular, the people in the village I was looking at.
I didn’t hear a voice but it came to me so clearly and out of the blue that I knew it was God speaking to me. “Just relax,” and then, “I’ll take care of the world.”
I began the psalm writing a verse from Psalm 131 that has impressed me ever since I preached from this psalm in the summer of 2000. I often think of this as a check on my nature.
“My heart is not proud, O Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.”
I began thinking of an image to describe my obsessive need to understand and finally came up with a spider out of control, shooting out webs in all directions.
Like a spider out of control, I shoot out my webs in all directions
trying to bring under control all that is around me
Then I began describing the situation,
I sit by the pool, looking out at the sea, on vacation
My eyes drift to a distant village along the beach
I begin to pray, expressing concern for the people living there
and then out of the blue a word comes to me
“Just relax.”
And then another
“I’ll take care of the world.”
And then I described how this made me feel.
A sense of relief
and then wonder
God cares enough about me that he wants me to relax?
He who never sleeps or slumbers wants me to relax?
As I continued to write, I was surprised to see the direction it took. A joke. A pleasant joke. I was the butt of the joke but I enjoyed the joke and laughed along.
The irony abounds
“I’ll take care of the world.”
Who takes care of the world all the time if not God?
Did the angels laugh along with God when he said that to me?
“Who do you think you are Jack, God?”
A joke at my expense, but not cruel, a loving joke and I laugh along
Gentleness behind that joke, recognizing my weakness
not the “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” asked of Job
but a gentle, ironic joke
that set me free
and let me know I was loved.
It is difficult for me to express how much this meant to me and how much it helped me on our vacation. It was a joke that showed me I was loved and cared for.
Do you see where these psalms took me? The one took me from feeling sick to submitting to God who is in control. The second took me from my unceasing reflection and allowed me to relax without feeling guilty and it let me know I was loved and belonged to the community of God and his angels.
This is what writing psalms can do for us.
I have handed out some material that can help you to write your own psalm. I am confident that many of you will be able to write more beautiful psalms than I can. But the point is not how beautiful they are but how they move us in our heart.
Take some time this week to breathe and relax, figure out what you are feeling and then begin writing your psalm and see what comes.
I would love it if you would share with us the psalms you write. Give it to me next week or email it to me and I may put some of the ones I receive in the bulletin, if you give me permission to do that.
The goal is not to write a psalm this week. The goal is to draw more intimately into your relationship with God who loves you.
May God bless you as you open your heart to God.
