Category: Praying with the Psalmists

I’ve written an as-yet-unpublished book on Psalms, Praying with the Psalmists, about the different types of Psalms and how we can use them as patterns for our own prayer. It might sound odd, but one of my favorite forms is the Lament. It’s also the most common form, and Laments show that we can bring all of our troubles to God, that we don’t have to always put on a happy face when we come before God. But also, the form of a Lament reminds us that we can trust God.

And I’m not going to let the name of the current president appear in this blog, but gracious – how much havoc he has caused in the first weeks of his second time in office. I live in northern Virginia, where a large percentage of the population is federal workers, and anxiety fills the air here. My small group and I tried to make a list of things to pray about, to try to be less overwhelmed, and even that was supremely difficult and gets added to every day.

So – I tried to be more general and come up with five general things to pray about daily, so I can tick them off on my fingers. Here’s what I came up with:

1) For people who have been and are being harmed by these actions, that this harm will be quickly mitigated.

This includes federal workers being fired, and others trying to work with smaller staff.
It includes transgender people losing civil rights and access to medication.
It includes families of those killed in the plane crashes after FAA personnel were fired.
It includes people being imprisoned in concentration camps because they tried to come here for refuge.

2) For forces of good that have been stopped, that the good will quickly start up again.

This includes everyone across the world helped by USAID.
It includes everyone helped by the Department of Education.
It includes everyone helped by the Consumer Protection Board.
It includes everyone who uses Medicaid.
It includes funding for cancer research, and so many other programs and research I don’t know about.

3) For the Constitution and the rule of law to be upheld.

Yes, we’re in a Constitutional crisis. It’s clearly illegal to fire Inspectors General without giving notice to Congress. Judges have already ruled against the administration in more than one case, and they’re talking about ignoring the judges. If they get away with that, they are ignoring the Constitution and grabbing the power of a dictator. I don’t want to live in a dictatorship.

This includes prayer for our elected officials, that they will do everything in their own power to uphold the Constitution.

4) For protection from further harm.

Firing air traffic controllers and replacing people with AI? What could go wrong? Refusing to allow the CDC to put out information when Avian flu is mutating? Allowing a rogue foreigner and an agency not approved by Congress to access all our personal data with access to Treasury computers? Talking about eliminating Social Security and Medicare? Talking about attacking other countries based on whims? Building prison camps in El Salvador? There’s so much, it’s hard to know what to worry about next.  Please protect us all, Lord!

5) For evil actions to come to light.

The administration has their own propaganda department, courtesy of right-wing “news” sources. And they are practiced in casting blame – trying to blame the recent plane crashes on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, with absolutely no evidence, for example. The rogue department that’s decimating the rest of the government has been avoiding any transparency. May that not stand. May the truth come out. May what is whispered in the dark be spoken in the daylight.

So – those are what I want to pray about. Now I’m going to write a short lament to do so – but consider all the listing above to be part of the lament.

Here are the parts of a lament:

A – Address to God
C – Complaint
C – Confession of Trust
E – Entreaty
S – Sureness of Help
S – Subsequent Praise

A Lament for a Time of Chaos

Help us, Lord!
We come before you asking that you hear our prayers.
Hear our prayer;
listen to our cry.

Lord, so many people are being harmed
by this administration’s callous actions.
Folks are illegally losing their jobs;
others are losing their civil rights.
And people who believed they could better their lives in America
are being imprisoned without recourse.

And Father, I didn’t realize how much good our country did
until it got stopped.
Fill in the gaps of helping cancer research
disease prevention
mitigating poverty
Alzheimer’s research
and so much more.
Help those who rely on Medicaid,
who need student loans,
who rely on grants for funding
to get by while it’s paused.

Lord, wicked men are ignoring our laws,
they’re blatantly breaking laws specifically written to keep this country a democracy.
They’re flaunting their power
and saying, “Who can stop us?”

Lord, we know that you do see.
We believe that you do have power.
And I’m sorry that my trust
sounds so feeble right about now.
Will you indeed act?

Arise, O Lord!
Do not forget the marginalized.
Let the wicked fall into the pit they’ve dug.
Let their feet be caught in the net they have hidden.
May all their wickedness come to light.
May their power grabs be their downfall.
And please, protect your children
from further harm.
Show us how to resist.
Cut through the chaos and guide us
what to do to help preserve our republic.

Lord God, I do believe that the arc of the universe
bends toward justice.
Please speed up that bending!
Let this setback to justice, mercy, and truth be short.

And when it all comes crashing down for these wicked people,
our hearts will be light
and there will be rejoicing in the streets.

May that day come soon, Lord God!

***

Okay, that’s what I came up with on the spot. I will be praying my five prayer requests daily for the forseeable future. May the Lord have mercy on us.

Psalm 58:1-2 —
Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.

It seemed appropriate that last week, as our president-elect was threatening war against Greenland, Canada, and Panama, that I was having my quiet times in Psalm 58. [I have a somewhat random method of choosing where in Scripture to focus my quiet times. It has to do with my schedule of reviewing what I’ve memorized. Psalm 58 was up next.]

What I thought about was that the world has had unjust rulers as long as we have had rulers. And God’s people have brought that before God in prayer just as long.

As it happens, shortly before the election, I was having my quiet times in Malachi 3, which definitely made me think of one candidate:

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

Wisdom Psalms are all about how it’s good for you to follow God – but they also grapple (notably in Psalm 73, but other places as well) with how sometimes the wicked prosper. And they absolutely, definitely pray that the wicked will experience their own downfall and the consequences of their unjust actions. It is right and good to pray against those who do the things above. And I firmly believe that is ultimately good for our nation to be against injustice, evil, and oppression.

In this post, rather than write my own psalm, I’m going to use words directly from Scripture to pray for our new administration.

Before I begin, let me say that I am completely against political violence. But I am absolutely for the metaphorical lions having their fangs torn out. (See the difference?) Lest anyone misunderstand, again, let me say that I am taking these words directly from Scripture.

Let me also say that when I see “poor and needy,” I’m thinking of transgender folks whose rights may get stripped away, and of people currently eligible for Medicaid and Social Security recipients who may lose benefits. To anyone marginalized whose situation may be made worse.  To the extent that doesn’t happen – well, these prayers are against any who oppress the poor and needy, who make life harder for them.

Let’s begin with Psalm 58:6-7–

Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions!
Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.

And then verses from Psalm 10 come to mind:

In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
who are caught in the schemes he devises.
He boasts about the cravings of his heart;
he blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord.
In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;
in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
His ways are always prosperous;
your laws are rejected by him;
he sneers at all his enemies.
He says to himself, “Nothing will ever shake me.”
He swears, “No one will ever do me harm.”
His mouth is full of lies and threats;
trouble and evil are under his tongue….
He says to himself, “God will never notice;
he covers his face and never sees.”

Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
“He won’t call me to account”?
But you, O God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked man;
call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
that would not otherwise be found out.

From Psalm 7:14-16–
Whoever is pregnant with evil
conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment.
Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out
falls into the pit they have made.
The trouble they cause recoils on them;
their violence comes down on their own heads.

And let’s dip into Proverbs, for Proverbs 21:13:

Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor
will also cry out and not be answered.

Proverbs 17:23 —
The wicked accept bribes in secret
to pervert the course of justice.

Proverbs 29: 4, 7 —
By justice a king gives a country stability,
but those who are greedy for bribes tear it down.

The righteous care about justice for the poor,
but the wicked have no such concern.

Psalm 12 seems very timely:
Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore;
those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
Everyone lies to their neighbor;
they flatter with their lips
and harbor deception in their hearts.

May the Lord silence all flattering lips
and every boastful tongue –
those who say,
“By our tongues we will prevail;
our own lips will defend us – who is lord over us?”

“Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan,
I will now arise,” says the Lord.
“I will protect them from those who malign them.”
And the words of the Lord are flawless,
like silver purified in a crucible,
like gold refined seven times.

You, Lord, will keep the needy safe
and will protect us forever from the wicked,
who freely strut about
when what is vile is honored by the human race.

Psalm 28:3-4–
Do not drag me away with the wicked,
with those who do evil,
who speak cordially with their neighbors
but harbor malice in their hearts.
Repay them for their deeds
and for their evil work;
repay them for what their hands have done
and bring back on them what they deserve.

From Psalm 37–
Do not fret because of those who are evil
or be envious of those who do wrong;
for like the grass they will soon wither,
like green plants they will soon die away….

A little while, and the wicked will be no more;
though you look for them, they will not be found….

The wicked plot against the righteous
and gnash their teeth at the;
but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
for he knows their day is coming.
The wicked draw the sword
and bend the bow
to bring down the poor and needy,
to slay those whose ways are upright.
But their swords will pierce their own hearts,
and their bows will be broken….

I have seen a wicked and ruthless man
flourishing like a luxuriant native tree,
but he soon passed away and was no more;
though I looked for him, he could not be found.

Psalm 52:1-7–
Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero?
Why do you boast all day long,
you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?
You who practice deceit,
your tongue plots destruction;
it is like a sharpened razor.
You love evil rather than good,
falsehood rather than speaking the truth.
You love every harmful word,
you deceitful tongue!

Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin:
He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent;
he will uproot you from the land of the living.
The righteous will see and fear;
they will laugh at you, saying,
“Here now is the man
who did not make God his stronghold
but trusted in his great wealth
and grew strong by destroying others!”

Psalm 64:2-8–
Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked,
from the plots of evildoers.
They sharpen their tongues like swords
and aim cruel words like deadly arrows.
They shoot from ambush at the innocent;
they shoot suddenly, without fear.
They encourage each other in evil plans,
they talk about hiding their snares;
they say, “Who will see it?”
They plot injustice and say,
“We have devised a perfect plan!”
Surely the human mind and heart are cunning.

But God will shoot them with his arrows;
they will suddenly be struck down.
He will turn their own tongues against them
and bring them to ruin;
all who see them will shake their heads in scorn.

And of course Psalm 109:7-19–
When he is tried, let him be found guilty,
and may his prayers condemn him.
May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership….
May a creditor seize all he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children….

For he never thought of doing a kindness,
but hounded to death the poor
and the needy and the brokenhearted.
He loved to pronounce a curse —
may it come back on him.
He found no pleasure in blessing —
may it be far from him.
He wore cursing as his garment;
it entered into his body like water,
into his bones like oil.
May it be like a cloak wrapped about him,
like a belt tied forever around him.

Psalm 140:8-13–
Do not grant the wicked their desires, Lord;
do not let their plans succeed.
Those who surround me proudly rear their heads;
may the mischief of their lips engulf them.
May burning coals fall on them;
may they be thrown into the fire,
into miry pits, never to rise.
May slanderers not be established in the land;
may disaster hunt down the violent.
I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor
and upholds the cause of the needy.
Surely the righteous will praise your name,
and the upright will live in your presence.

And finally, Psalm 146:

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is the Lord their God.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them —
he remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.

Praise the Lord.

May it be so, Lord. Amen and amen.

It’s Thanksgiving Day!

And this calls for a Thanksgiving Psalm. The Thanksgiving Psalms in Scripture are Psalms 9, 18, 30, 40, 66, 107, 116, 118, 124, and 138. They’ve got this form:

1) Call to Praise
2) “I Was in Trouble”
3) “I Called”
4) “God Answered”
5) Response of Praise

So these Thanksgiving Psalms include a story of how the psalmist was specifically in a bad place, they turned to God, and God came through. This is different than our typical list of things we’re thankful for. But let me tell you how it fits with my mood for Thanksgiving this year and how writing a thanksgiving psalm I think will help set me right, remind me of the good God has done in my life.

First, November is always a little fraught for me. It was November 10, 2005, when I got back from an amazing trip to Paris with my writing buddies, right after my husband had told me he was divorcing me – that he moved out of our house to start the clock on our separation to make that divorce happen. November 22, 2010 was when we finally had a court date for that divorce, and November 25, 2010, was the date our divorce was final. Then November 30 is my ex-husband’s birthday, and November 30, 2019, was the day my mother passed away from Alzheimer’s, two months after my father had passed away from a heart attack.

So, yeah. And this year, I’ve been blogging about my trip back to Germany, so a dose of nostalgia about my young family. (I think I did keep the dosage not too high, but it was there.)

And this week, my ex-husband has his 60th birthday. So both my kids went to visit him, only a few hours away in southern Virginia. They’re there for a week, and I’ll go down and meet them in Williamsburg next Tuesday – just like I used to do when my youngest attended William & Mary.

But Tuesday night, I was feeling just a little blue. And I couldn’t play games online with my youngest like we do most weeks, because they’re with their Dad. And a text with a picture in the airport reminded me of all the times we traveled as a family – and made me miss them and miss being a family.

I’ve tried to counteract all that by remembering how thankful I am for the phase of life I’m in now. It’s Thanksgiving, after all!

But Tuesday I was feeling a little blue – and I did my mostly-daily reading a page of Scripture – and this verse (already circled) was on that page:

Isaiah 46:4 —

Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

I’ll take it! Yes, what I needed to hear at that moment. I’m in a new phase of life – one I never expected when I was in the Young Family Phase – single, with a career and my dream job, serving on book award committees, co-leading a small group, singing in a choir… Life is very, very good – and all these are gifts from God, who is with me still. I still need sustenance and carrying at times, and God freely gives it.

And then I realized that on my ex-husband’s actual birthday (which is also the 5-year anniversary of my mother’s death), I’m going to hit Isaiah 55 in my Scripture reading. Back during the hard five years of the divorce process, every single time my husband mentioned taking me to court, somehow or other, in my reading or in a sermon, Isaiah 55 would come up, including the verse – “You will refute every tongue that accuses you.” So *that* reminds me of how, even though I very much didn’t want the divorce, God was with me through that and God has brought great good out of it – and yeah, I need to write a thanksgiving psalm!

A Thanksgiving Psalm for a Later Phase of Life

Thank you, Lord!
For you have always been faithful.
You see me, you know my heart’s cry,
and you always tenderly care for me.

I’d thought I was in a happy marriage,
I relished time in Europe with my young family,
and divorce hit me like a thunderbolt,
my world turned upside-down and inside-out.
Everything I’d thought about my future
was rendered impossible,
and with it everything I’d thought about my own lovability
was rendered questionable.

But I did turn to you
in my trouble, Lord.
And I turned to friends,
who listened, who encouraged,
and who helped me turn to you.

And you answered!

Friends surrounded me, prayed with me
assured me I was worthy of love.
Friends let me stay with them,
helped me get my bearings,
give me a place to visit on holidays
(to this day!),
and gave me the strength
to envision a new life as a single mom.

I got my Master’s in Library Science,
became a librarian,
landed a job near my home,
became a Cybils judge,
got on the Newbery committee,
got on the Mathical Book Prize committee,
got on the Morris committee,
and landed my dream job
as Youth Materials Selector.

I get to sing in the choir,
co-lead a small group,
play games with friends every week,
post book reviews,
write a book about Psalms,
own my own condo
(thanks to a down payment from my Dad),
where I can walk by a lake
and take pictures of great blue herons.

My life is simply overflowing
with wonderful things –
and most of them would have never happened
if I had stayed married.
Truly, God, you work all things together for good –
even from things that are bad by themselves.

This is a different life
than anything I had ever envisioned –
but it is very good.

Thank you, Lord,
for surprising me with a future I hadn’t imagined.
For sustaining me, carrying me
when I was at my lowest
and still giving a boost
even at low times now.
(When I know full well I have no business feeling blue –
you, Lord, know that I am human.)

Thank you for a lovely day
with a Friend-Since-3rd-Grade and her family
and a hug from a Mom
to fill that feeling of missing my own Mom.
Thank you for food and games and laughter
and people caring about and enjoying each other.

Thank you for a wonderful world full of surprises
and a wonderful life.

My small group is going through a wonderful book on Joy, Champagne for the Soul, by Mike Mason. I love the book, I love focusing on Joy, and I love the discussions we’re having in our group.

However, something I read yesterday hit me wrong. He was talking about Joy as a sacrifice – sacrificing whatever it is that gets in the way of Joy, whether anger or pride or complaining.

The psalmist knew how to shake free of trouble with a psalm. That’s what the psalms are – sacrifices of joy. David knew God’s pleasure is not in dead animals or rituals but in what happens in the human heart. If the heart doesn’t engage joyfully in worship, or at least emerge from worship rejoicing, then the sacrifice is incomplete. The ultimate sacrifice we can offer the Lord is the sacrifice of joy.

Many of the psalms begin in joy, and those that don’t start on a high note usually end that way. As the psalmist enters the presence of God, no matter how burdened he may be, there’s a movement from negative to positive. The heart lifts as all that weighs it down is sacrificed….

For the person committed to joy, so many roads are no longer open – scorn, impatience, complaining, criticism. When all such easy and habitual options are cut off, a wonderful clarification takes place in th spirit. The dross settles out, leaving room only for the gold of joy.

Joy is the ultimate sacrifice.

Why did those lines hit me the wrong way?

Well, first let me say that we’ve all known people who kill the joy of everyone around them with their complaining. I’m not saying that negative emotions are good things. I also agree that the Psalms move from negative to positive.

But I don’t like the term “sacrifice” used about those negative emotions. It’s not like you cut them off and you’re not allowed to feel them. It’s not a matter of squelching them and refusing to feel them. The psalmists literally say “I pour out my complaint”! They go into great detail about their problems – that’s part of the process.

So maybe that can be thought of as sacrifice if you make an effort to pour out the complaints to God instead of the people around you. But you don’t give up feeling bad, because you’re still human.

Now, with all that in mind, something that’s hurting my Joy these days is worrying about the election. So why don’t I model the Lament process by writing a Lament for the Election? Now, I already did one in my personal journal, and I think for public consumption, I won’t write out ALL my worries. But a Lament really does help you move from negative to positive – not because of “sacrificing” the negative emotions, but because of acknowledging them and bringing them to God.

Here are the parts of a Lament:
Address to God
Complaint
Confession of Trust
Entreaty
Sureness of Help
Subsequent Praise

So, here’s a sample Lament for the Election:

Lord, I come before you
to bring you my worries and fears.
Hear my prayer,
listen to my voice.

Father, I’m afraid of what could happen,
I’m worried about the future.
Especially if the guy should win who talks about
taking rights from transgender people like my daughter
and demonizing the vulnerable among us
and taking away citizenship from people who thought they had it
and deporting people who get our food to market
and depriving women of rights over their own bodies
and trying to stop people from reading books they don’t agree with
and threatening to imprison librarians like me who make those books available
and so much more.

And if he doesn’t win,
I’m worried about unrest and violence
and accusations of cheating
and disregard for the law.
I’m worried about people in power
who will try to further those outcomes.

But Lord, I do trust you.
Bad things happen,
but you always bring good out of it,
at the very least rousing people to stand up for what’s right.

You’ve given us free will,
but you also direct our steps.
I see so many people standing up for the good,
for the rights of the poor and oppressed,
for joy and hope.

Rise up, O Lord!
Send your guidance to people throughout this country.
Help people to listen to your voice,
listen to angels nudging them
even listen to their own better nature.

Let any attempts to cheat
come to light and be thwarted.
Let any violence
be stopped before it can erupt.

I do believe that your Spirit guides us, Lord.
I do believe that you are moving.

I look forward to the day after the election
when we can rejoice
because Joy and Hope have triumphed,
because we’ve elected a president
who will work to do right by the people of America.
And we will be glad!

I didn’t put names in this Lament. So honestly, if you really feel differently from me about who would try to do evil and who would work to do good, you can pray that. May we listen to God’s guidance as we vote.

And people tell me I shouldn’t let my hopes get too high. We’ve all been burned before. But part of the Lament form is visualizing how filled with joy you’ll be when God answers your prayer – and I’d rather go there.

When I say “small” disasters in the title, I really do mean small. Nothing life-threatening. But you know how after a series of things go wrong, you start to expect things to go wrong? I want to do some resetting and remember that I trust God to protect me from actual disasters.

Let me grumble first about the series of small disasters.

It began over a year ago in the middle of the night when I heard a crash that I honestly thought was something crashing through the wall of my house. It turned out to be that a closet shelf had collapsed, with too much weight on one side, it had ripped out of the wall. Or that’s what I thought was the problem. I eventually moved all my clothes out of that closet, unsure what to do.

A couple weeks later, I stepped into my bathroom on a Saturday morning — into a puddle of water. There was water dripping from my ceiling. Long story short, it was from a leak behind the shower in the condo above me — and it was also going into that very same closet. The shelf had probably given way because the wall was wet. The good part was that I’d already taken almost all my clothes out. And my insurance gave me a new bathroom (they’d torn down the ceiling) and put the closet shelf back up. Of course, I had to reorganize everything in both my closets so as not to put so much weight on the shelf. And pay the $500 deductible.

The next water adventure was about a month later – when a storm with wind in an unusual direction had water pouring into my bedroom from the window. And water dripping in from my office window. I ended up getting new windows for both those rooms for thousands of dollars.

And the rest of the mini-disasters were mostly financial. Was told I needed two new dental crowns, $600 each. Switched from a CPAP machine to a dental device for $900. Need new glasses $700. (I know, I should have found a way to get them cheaper, but they’re progressives.) And there was more that I’ve forgotten.

Then there were the medical things. Got hit with vertigo that sent me to the hospital to be sure it wasn’t another stroke. It wasn’t, but the dizziness lasted two months. My eye disease (Fuch’s Dystrophy) has gotten worse, and I may need surgery. I was diagnosed with prediabetes. My blood pressure is high. My two big toenails have been messed up since I went on a super steep hike in Maui a year and a half ago, and I was told they need to come off so that the new nails will grow in correctly. Turns out, that hurts. Will they heal in time to do lots of hiking on my upcoming trip?

They’re all stupid little things — but if I don’t pay attention, they can all build up to worrying and fretting.

I’m going to go on a 60th birthday trip to Germany next week, and it’s easy to fret about details for that, too.

So I want to pause, take a deep breath, and pray a psalm of Trust.

I have written a book about Psalms (still seeking a publisher) and the key concepts in Psalms of Trust are:

• Trust
• Refuge
• No Fear
• Vindication
• Guidance
• Deliverance
• Faithfulness

So let me pray one now. As always, I offer these examples partly to encourage people that they don’t have to be very good! I think I’ll use Psalm 27 as my model.

A Psalm for Carrying On after Small Disasters

Lord, you are my castle –
Why should I worry?
You are my provision –
Why should I fret?

When my plans crumble before my eyes,
when the walls of my home don’t do their job,
you give me strength to deal with it,
help to carry on.
You bring the right professionals into my path
and supply what I need.

Father, I didn’t want to deal with those things;
my first reaction is always catastrophic,
but again and again, you bring me through.
You help me take the problem piece by piece
and come to a solution.

Lord, I trust you.
Your love and faithfulness are eternal.
I’ve come through disasters before,
and you’re not going to abandon me now.

I don’t want to be thinking about the difficult details –
those will all get taken care of.
Help me see past them to the joy
of blooming irises,
of a great blue heron,
of silly posing turtles,
of bright blue skies and white puffy clouds.

And a birthday coming up, going back to a place I loved,
reminding me that you have been faithful in my life for sixty years.

Thank you — the disasters are small
because you are big.

I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.

My as-yet-unpublished book, Praying with the Psalmists, is about using patterns from Psalms in your own prayers. I want to make a habit of praying that way, using different types of Psalms.

On Good Friday, before singing in a wonderful cantata in the evening, I walked among the bluebells at Bull Run Regional Park in the afternoon.

So this is a perfect time to write a creation hymn.

Creation Hymns in Psalms use the following key concepts:

• God’s Glory
• God’s Sustaining Care
• God’s Knowledge
• Creation’s Joyful Response

You’ll find them in Psalms 8, 19, 33, 65, 95, 96, 104, 139, and 148.

The key concepts give us an idea of what to talk about. I’m going to write a creation psalm about what a wonderful time I had out in God’s creation.

Lord, I love the bluebells so much,
the first flowers on the forest floor.
Each one has small beauty,
rewarding a zoom lens with a glimpse of perfection.
But the fields together
give sparkles of color as far as the eye can see.

I love the way these flowers are wild,
not cultivated like hothouse plants,
but exuberantly filling every bit of ground
overflowing a space that tree leaves normally shade,
bursting forth before the leaves come back,
proclaiming with their brightness that Spring is on its way.

And you gave me a glorious day to roam the trail,
to stop and stoop to capture one flower’s portrait.
Sunshine streaming through the bare branches,
blue skies shining high above,
air brisk and clear,
a perfect day for a ramble.

And with the cantata choir to come,
songs of your love go through my head.
And can it be that I should gain
an interest in my Savior’s blood?
And can it be?
And can it be?

No humans tend these abundant blossoms,
they fall under your tender care.
And if that is how God clothes the Spring blossoms,
that appear only for a few weeks,
how much more will my Father in heaven
care for my needs?

Lord, it’s hard to worry or fret
when walking the Bluebell Trail.
With the river calmly flowing past,
the small flowers dancing in the breezes,
the brisk air filling my lungs,
the happy children spotting critters,
the sound of birds chirping in the trees high above,
it easy to imagine they’re all singing your praises.
And I can pause my busy life to join in.

That’s the idea. Mind you, I’m partly posting this so you know your own psalms don’t actually have to be very good!

Try it at home! If you’re really brave, post one you’ve written in the comments!

I’ve written a book about Psalms called Praying with the Psalmists: Open Your Heart in Prayer Using Patterns from Psalms.

I’m currently looking for a publisher, and one of the publishers I’m planning to query asks for a list of ways your book challenges assumptions. They want a dozen or more ways. I’ve come up with a disorganized list, and I thought it would be fun to post them while trying to make some kind of order. So enjoy!

Challenging Assumptions in Praying with the Psalmists:

• You might think that Psalms are ancient literature and have no relevance to today, but human emotions are still the same centuries later, and we can learn from Psalms about opening our hearts in prayer.
• If you think the God of the Old Testament is judgmental and angry, it will be good to immerse yourself in studying Psalms, where we see, again and again, that the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and rich in love.
• If you think poetry has to rhyme, you might be surprised to learn about the Hebrew poetry of Psalms, where the form used is mainly parallelism — a form about the content of the lines rather than the sound of the lines, which has been translated beautifully into thousands of languages over time.
• If you think that only gifted writers can write poetry, you may be surprised at how easy it is to copy the parallelism the psalmists used, and how it can slow down your thinking, make you pause, and help you open your heart.
• You may have heard you should follow a formula when you pray such as ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication), but the 150 Psalms in the Bible fall into ten different types, and each type has a different form or set of key concepts. There are many ways to pray, and studying Psalms can deepen your prayer life.
• If you’ve been told you should pray specific requests so you will notice when God answers, you will find it interesting that the psalmists go into great detail about their problems, but make their requests to the Lord in generalities, trusting the Lord to figure out the specifics.
• If you think you could never memorize a Psalm because you’re bad at memorizing, you need to know that no one is bad at memorizing Scripture. Memorizing a Psalm might take you longer than someone else, but you got to spend more time with the passage, so how is that bad?
• If you think it’s not okay to question God, take a look at the angry and despairing questions in some of the Psalms.
• You might think Psalms are all about joy and praise, but there are more Laments in the Bible than any other type of Psalm.
• On the other hand, you might think Laments are depressing to read or write, so you may be surprised to learn that along with detailing their troubles, the psalmists who wrote Laments also include a section about trusting God and a section about how they’ll praise God when God answers.
• If you’ve heard that Messianic Psalms all point to Jesus, you may think they are not something we could write today.  Yes, they foreshadow Jesus, but the psalmists who wrote them didn’t necessarily know they were prophesying. The Messianic Psalms make a good model of how we can pray about injustices in society or government.
• If you think the book of Psalms is too long to go through them all or that some Psalms simply aren’t interesting, then you’ll enjoy my 12-week Reading Plan to cover all the Psalms and show how they all fit into ten types.

There!  What do you think?  The publisher who asks for this says it helps them determine how your book gives new views on old questions.  I’m not sure my statements are as “provocative” as what they’re looking for, but I do think they give you a feel for what I’m trying to do with it.  I’ll polish up some more before I send the query, but I think I’ll work with this list.

I’ve written a book called Praying with the Psalmists.

My book is a complete study of Psalms, showing you how you can deepen your prayer life by using patterns from the ten types of Psalms in your own prayers. I illustrate the types of Psalms by telling my own story. But why Psalms?

Why Read Psalms?

Psalms is a book of emotions of humans in relationship with God. Did you know that there are more Laments in the biblical book of Psalms than there are Psalms of Praise? God can handle our emotions, both positive and negative, and you’ll find them all in the Book of Psalms. These emotions are timeless and the Psalms still touch our hearts today. I’ve got a Reading Plan for reading all the Psalms in 12 weeks, reading one type of Psalm each week.

Why Memorize Psalms?

I’ve memorized all 150 Psalms (beginning in childhood, when my parents paid me), and I’ve found that the brain exercise of memorizing a Psalm helps bypass your brain and bring it straight to your heart. Have you ever memorized a piece of music and found that once you memorize it, you can focus on musicality and meaning? “Hiding God’s Word in your heart” by memorizing a Psalm will help you feel the meaning of that Psalm all the more powerfully. (If you don’t believe me, try it!) I’ve got a chapter with some tips on memorizing Scripture in my book.

Why Study Psalms?

Looking deeper at Psalms, you can see the patterns the Psalmists used — and use them in your own prayers. This is the ultimate goal of my book: To give you another tool to use in prayer and to help your prayers reach your heart.

The book is a 12-week study of all 150 Psalms. You’ll read the Psalms of each type, hear how those Psalms touched my life, and see patterns in each type so you can try it yourself.

After all, sometimes you need a Lament.

Where am I in my book journey?

My book is written, and I brought my own small group through it in 2023, with the help of a co-leader.

In 2023, besides working full-time, I was on the Morris Award committee, so that was taking most of my free time. I did send the book out to some agents. But the feedback I got was that I need to grow my platform before I would get enough interest for an agent or large publisher.

So, in 2024, I’m going to try to grow my platform, as well as try some small publishers. If all else fails, I may decide to self-publish.

How can you help?

You can help my platform grow by subscribing to this blog. I’m going to try to post something about Psalms at least once a month. And I’ll post updates about my book journey. This is my personal blog, so if I find other pressing topics about faith or my life, this is where I put them. You can find out about everything else in my website on my About page.

Why Psalms?

Because if you give them the chance, Psalms will touch your heart.