Tuesday, May 21, 2024

THROUGH THE BIBLE — PSALMS——- UNDERSTANDING THEM #1 and #2

 THROUGH THE BIBLE— Psalms - Understanding Them 

A strange mixture of emotions is contained in this book. Here's why


    Written and Compiled

  by


    Keith Hunt




     Have you had trouble sometimes reading the book of Psalms?

Well if you have, you may take comfort in knowing that you have

not been alone.


     One person who had trouble reading and understanding the

book of Psalms was a Christian book writer by the name of Philip

Yancey.  In his book "the Bible Jesus Read" he has a whole

section devoted to this trouble with Psalms and how for years he

avoided the book, then tried to understand it from the

perspective of some modern "theology" and when that did not work,

avoiding it again. Finally, he did come to see how we should

basically understand and read the book of Psalms.


     So enlightening, and so as to what I believe is the truth of

the matter, has Yancey written on this subject, I must present

much of what he expounds on this often troublesome book, to all

who may be studying the Bible with the help of this Website. 


     Philip Yancey starts by saying,  quote, " I have a

confession to make. For years I avoided the book of

Psalms.....hard as I tried, I could never get excited about

actually reading Psalms. People around me used the book as a

spiritual medicine cabinet - ' If you feel depressed, read Psalms

37; if your health fails, try Psalms 121' - an approach that

never worked for me. With uncanny consistency I would land on a

psalm that aggravated, rather than cured, my problem.....reading

the book frustrated, rather than inspired me. More than anything,

I felt confused while reading Psalms, especially because

I had committed to ten in a row. Individual Psalms seemed to

CONTRADICT each other violently: psalms of bleak despair abutted

psalms of soaring joy, as if the scribes had arranged them with a

mockingly Hegelian sense of humor. 

     The first day, for example, my spirits soared as I read

Psalm 8......The next psalm continued in the same spirit,

praising God for his eternal reign, his fairness in judging the

world, his mercy to the oppressed, his trustworthiness. The

suddenly with Psalm 10 the mood abruptly shifted. Just before

ending my meditations I encountered these jarring words:


     Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?

     Why do you hide yourself in times of troubles?


     .............Every day I faced this same pattern of glaring

contradictions.  Instead of beginning the day with devotional

peace, I felt swept along on an emotional roller-coaster,

plummeting to the depths of despair and soaring to heights of

praise all in the same one-hour period.......

     After a week of this practice, I ran into yet another

problem. The psalms started to sound boring and repetitious. Why,

I wondered, did the Bible need 150 psalms? Wouldn't fifteen

suffice to cover the basic content? I struggled through my ten

psalms every day but left Breckenridge with an even worse

attitude towards Psalms. My experiment had failed. In guiltridden

evangelical fashion, I blamed myself, not the Bible, for the

failure......

     

     As a result, for years I simply avoided the book. You can

find a psalm that says anything, I reasoned. Matter of fact, you

can find a dozen psalms that say the very same thing. Why bother

with them? "


     End of quote. All emphasis in capitals is mine throughout.


     Now, you may have felt exactly the same way. but if not, you

have got to admit Philip Yancey is being bold and up-front with

us, opening up his heart to us, in telling his readers that that

was the way he felt about the book of Psalms. It just did not add

up or make much sense to him, and was very repetitive, hence to

him very boring.


     Not to leave his readers shocked beyond belief by his

thoughts on the book of Psalms, Yancey immediately goes on to

say, quote, " I now realize how impoverished was that view.....I

had MISSED the MAIN point, which is that the book of Psalms

comprises a sampling of spiritual journals, much like personal

letters to God.....I must read them as an 'OVER-THE-SHOULDER'

reader, since the intended audience was NOT OTHER people, but

GOD. Even the Psalms as public use were designed as corporate

prayers......


     These, however, are not pronouncements from on high,

delivered with full apostolic authority, on matters of faith and

practice. They are VERY PERSONAL PRAYERS in the form of poetry,

written by a VARIETY of people - peasants, kings, professional

musicians, rank amateurs - in WILDLY FLUCTUATING MOODS....." 

End of quote.


     I want you to re-read all that again. Do you see the basic

key that Yancey is trying to get across here?

     Psalms are not so much divine "doctrine" theology from God

(although many truths and divine theology is contained in them)

to us mortals, BUT, mortals praying to God in private personal

prayers, put to poetry, that often just pour out much mortal

emotions, under a specific situation in that point and time of

that mortals life. 

     We are as Philip Yancey came to see, looking over the

shoulder of mortal people, talking to God, with many mortal

emotions being shown, depending on the circumstance that that

mortal person was in at the time when they needed to utter those

poetic prayers to God.

     Hence, some of human frustrations, groanings,

disappointments, bewilderments, doubts, fears, and even anger (as

well as the emotions of joy, peace, thankfulness, praise

etc.), were sounded out towards God. Kind of using God as a

sounding board at times, to just "get it off our chest" as the

saying goes.


     Philip Yancey puts it this way, quote, " Psalms gives

examples of 'ordinary' people STRUGGLING mightily to align what

they believed about God with what they ACTUALLY EXPERIENCE.

Sometimes the authors are vindictive, sometimes self-righteous,

sometimes paranoid, sometimes petty." End quote.


     We as Christians know God is LOVE, we know He is JUST, FAIR,

KIND, and all that is proper and good, all that is wholesome and

righteous. But, often in this physical Christian walk, troubles,

pain, sorrow, disappointments, frustrations, sickness, hardships,

come our way. Even mental or emotional, and sometimes physical,

persecutions come upon us, from many different people, who desire

to become our enemies, and fight us in different way. Christians

do have accidents, do get injured, do loose jobs, have loved

ones face and get into all kinds of trials and troubles.  

     Then of course, Christians have many times of "everything

goin' just fine" and times of healing from sickness, job problems

being solved, protection from accidents,

deliverance from enemies, and blessing by the cart load.

     This is the physical life we are in, ups and downs, blessing

and troubles. Some have more of this and some more of that.

Sometimes it seems it is the way the cards are dealt out, and we

may have "Well, why this Lord?" and "Well, why that Lord?" and "I

just don't understand if you are love, why this is happening to

me."  

     Whatever the seeming blessings or curses that come our way,

whatever the miracles or lack of them, whatever the joys or the

frustrations, whatever the questions of the whys of anything, and

whatever the thankfulness and praise we feel at times, it can

all be manifest in our emotions of heart and mind. Then if we

want to openly talk to God about it all, just letting it all out,

bad, good, and inbetween, it will come out in prayers to God,

some we may write down in the form of poetry.


     Often, when letting it all hang out (if we are being

frustrated, disappointed, angry, bewildered) we are hoping that

in getting it all off our chest to God, that the answers will

come....sometimes they do indeed.


     David at one point in his life was frustrated, confused, and

even angry, when looking at some of the evil people in the world,

and seeing how PHYSICALLY WEALTHY they were, a bunch of filthy

rich evil sinners.  He cried out to God in a poetic prayer about

it all. For a while just let God known how he felt about this

fact of life, and you get a clear feeling he was disappointed

with God that the Lord should allow some evil people to be

physically blessed in this life.

     Then the answer came to him. It came to him it would seem

during his bewildered and frustrated out cry to God concerning

what he thought was "not proper justice" that evil people should

be physically so blessed.  The answer was given to him. The evil

ones in this lifetime that have been blessed physically, will one

day have no blessing. They and their material blessings will be

gone....forever, but the child of God who remains true and

faithful, and who may not have had such material blessing in this

lifetime, as some of the evil ones, will have eternal life in the

future, with blessings that cannot be compared to anything

physical on this earth.


     When we look over the shoulder so to speak, of those who

wrote and said the psalms to God, when we take into account the

context of the situation of why they were saying those words to

the Lord, when we take into account the human emotions just let

loose at times, in those prayers, then we can better begin to

start to understand the book of Psalms.


     So none would mis-understand, Philip Yancey went on to say,

quote, " Do not misunderstand me: I do not believe Psalms to be

any LESS valuable, or LESS inspired, than Paul's letters or the

Gospels. Never the less, the Psalms do use an inherently

DIFFERENT approach, not so much as representing God TO THE PEOPLE

as THE PEOPLE representing THEMSELVES to God. Yes, Psalms belongs

as part of God's Word, but in the same way Job or Ecclesiastes

belongs. We read the speeches of Job's friends - accurate records

of misguided thinking - in a different way than we read the

Sermon on the Mount........Understanding this DISTINCTION changed

the way I read Psalms......

     Now, as I read them, I begin by trying to project myself

back into the minds of those authors.....Could I pray these

prayers? I ask myself. Have I felt this parculiar anguish? This

outburst of praise?  Then I proceed to think through situations

in which I might pray the psalm in front of me. Facing

temptation, celebrating a success, harboring a grudge, suffering

an injustice - under what circumstances would this psalm best

apply in my life?...." End quote.


     Ah, yes, to understand the Psalms we must take them one by

one, putting them each in their own context of life as the writer

was or had experienced at the time of their writing of the

prayer.  This book of Psalms is a collection of prayers, prayed

under different situations, many situations that this physical

life can throw at us. Some good times, some bad times, some

frustrating times, some bewildered times, some times of

strength given, some times of deliverance found.....just whatever

times may come upon us. And that includes times when we study

God's word and proclaim the truth found in it. Some of the psalms

are utterances of some of the "theological" divine truths of the

Lord, such as the ones speaking about the first and second

comings of the Messiah to this earth, and what was to take place

on His first advent, and is to take place on His second advent.


     Some of the Psalms then have "prophetic" parts to them, some

are re-emphasis on the sure promises of God, that He will perform

on the righteous and the sinners. So there is some divine

theology within the Psalms, but for the most part, they are as

Yancey says, the prayers of individuals, in various moods of

emotions, towards God, and we are looking over their shoulder as

they let it all hang out with God.


     We must not take any one of the psalms and lift it from its

whole context of the other psalms or the context of the whole

Bible. To do that will surely lead us into many false ideas,

thoughts, and false teaching of theology. To illustrate this

danger, of isolating psalms from the rest of the book or from the

Bible, Philip Yancey gives this example using Psalm 91.


     " Any one of the psalms, WRENCHED from the rest of the book,

MAY MISLEAD. In a thoughtful reflection on Psalm 91 published in

Christianity Today, author Neal Plantinga considers its beautiful

image of God's protection. 'He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will find refuge.....If you make the Most

High your dwelling - even the Lord, who is my refuge - then no

harm will befall you....'  Oh? Plantinga muses. What about

Christians arrested by the Nazis in World War 2, or by hostile

Muslim governments today? How must that psalm sound as they read

it on the eve of execution? The psalms' sweeping promises of

safety seem patently untrue.

     Plantinga recalls that Satan himself quoted from this psalm,

jerking it out of CONTEXT, in an attempt to get Jesus to jump

from a high place. Jesus rebuked him with ANOTHER passage of

Scripture. Says Plantinga:

     ' What Psalm 91 does is express ONE - one of the loveliest,

     one of the most treasured - but just ONE of the MOODS of

     faith. It's a mood of exuberant confidence in the sheltering

     providence of God. Probably the psalmist HAD BEEN

     PROTECTED by God in SOME DANGEROUS INCIDENT, and he is

     CELEBRATING. 

     On OTHER DAYS, and in OTHER MOODS - in other and darker

     seasons of his life - the same psalmist might have called to

     God out of DESPAIR and a sense of ABANDONMENT. (Here

     Plantinga cites Jesus' cry of Psalm 22 from the cross).

     Psalm 91 gives us ONLY PART of the picture and only ONE of

     the moods of faith.

     With a kind of quiet amazement, the psalmist bears witness

     that under the wings of God GOOD THINGS happen to BAD

     people. You need ANOTHER psalm or two to fill in the

     picture, to cry out that under those same wings BAD THINGS

     sometimes happen to GOOD people.' 


     .......The first and greatest commandment is to love the

Lord our God with all out hearts and all our souls and all our

minds......Psalms reveals what a heartfelt, soul-starved,

single-minded relationship with God looks like. "  End quote.


     Psalm 91 cannot and must not be taken out of the context of

the book of Psalms nor especially out of the context of the

entire Bible. The truth of the whole Bible bears witness to the

fact that God does not ALWAYS protect His children with some

miraculous intervention to save them from physical hurt or even

death. The famous "faith" chapter of the book of Hebrews (chapter

11) proves that point beyond any doubt.  Some of God's

people have suffered to the point of death. And the book of

Revelation says that before it is all over and Christ returns in

power and glory, many true Christians will yet suffer (even death

once more) at the hands of Satanic forces.

     God CAN and WILL protect, but He chooses WHEN and to WHOM

that protection will be given. Psalm 91 is not a teaching of a

promise of 100% protection by God towards ALL His children under

ALL situations throughout life. Of course it cannot be, for such

a protection from physical harm has never been an absolute

promise, fulfilled absolutely, on God's children, from the time

of Adam to this very day. The great apostle Paul was surely not

given divine physical protection all the time during his

ministry. He clearly states in his epistles some of the physical

things he suffered at the hands of men. He was finally killed by

the hands of men, history says his head was removed by the sword.

And that same traditional history says the apostle Peter was

crucified upside-down.


     As Neal Plantinga has pointed out above, the psalmist must

have indeed in his life situation, at least in one circumstance,

found himself being given divine miraculous life saving 

protection, even with a thousand falling at his right hand, and

so was so thankful and so amazed at what God COULD DO (if He

decided to do) that he praised the Lord with a prayer of thanks.

And in so doing reminded us that God can protect and save our

physical life, that such is possible for God.  But such is not

always what God does for His people, as the rest of the Psalms

and Bible show us.


     To try to use this Psalm 91 in any other way, and take vain,

careless, foolish, or blind faith (actually could be arrogant

unscriptural faith) actions with our lives, is indeed "tempting

the Lord."  Satan wanted Christ to use this blind faith (quoting

from this psalm 91), and Jesus soon quoted another verse of

Scripture that says, "You shall not tempt the Lord your God."


     It is wise to remember that some psalms or parts of them are

prayers of people in various states of emotional situations based

upon what is or has happened to them, in a particular

circumstance, at some particular point in their life, and they

are letting it all hang out with God, be it good emotions or

sometimes not so good emotions. They may be stating some

theological truths of the Lord, they may be praising the Lord for

some good that has come upon them, or they may be full of

anguish, disappointment, frustration, anger, bewilderment, and

they are looking for answer to it all from God.

     The Psalms are the people of God in the raw. It is wonderful

to know that we can be in the raw in our prayers with our Father

in heaven, who knows our frame, and knows we are flesh.

     To keep all this in mind, will greatly help us to correctly

read and understand the book of Psalms.


            ....................................


Written September 2001


To be continued



Psalms - Understanding Them #2

From the book "The Bible Jesus Read" by Philip Yancey


     For the rest of this study I shall leave the majority as to

what is said to Philip Yancey.  All emphasis in capital letters

is mine. 


Quote:


MESSY AND DISTORTED, LIKE LIFE


     ....At a basic level, the psalms help me reconcile what I

believe about life with what I actually encounter in

life......Why have more Christians died for their faith in this

century than in all others combined? 

     God is good? Why did my father, a young man with unlimited

potential as a missionary, die before reaching the age of thirty?

Why did all those Jews and Christians die unjustly in the

Holocaust? Why is the most religious portion of our population,

inner-city African-Americans, the most poverty-stricken and

hopeless?....

     What of the Christians in Sudan or Mozambique, though? How

can they thank God while dying for want of food?

     If reading the last three paragraphs has made you slightly

uncomfortable, perhaps you should read Psalms again. It contains

the ANGUISHED journals of people who want to believe in a loving,

gracious, faithful God while the world keeps FALLING APART

around them......

     

     Why should David, anointed by God to be king, spend a decade

hiding out in caves and dodging the spears of Saul, whom God had

ordered to step down. How can God's people feel thankful when

there seems so little to feel thankful about?

     Many psalms show their authors fiercely struggling with such

questions......

     Psalm 62 boldly, without explanation, insists on two facts

that Job could never put together: 'that you, O God, are strong,

and that you, O Lord, are loving.'  Sometimes, however, the poets

cannot make sense of what they see, and the psalmists end up

sounding exactly like Job:

     ' I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My

eyes fail, looking for my God' (69:3).

     

     At this point the seemingly random ordering of the 150

psalms comes into play, for the SEESAW cycle of INTIMACY and

ABANDONMENT is, in fact, what MOST people experience in their

relationship  with God.....


     Psalm 23, that shepherd song of sweeping promise and

consummate comfort, follows on the heels of Psalm 22, which opens

with the words Jesus cried from the cross, 'My God, my God, why

have you forsaken me?' The two psalms, both attributed to David,

could hardly form a more glaring CONTRAST. True, David does find

some sort of resolution in Psalm 22, by looking ahead to a future

time when God will rule over the nations and the poor will eat

their fill. But he makes clear how he feels at the moment of

writing" 'I cry out by day, but you do not answer....I am a worm

and not a man....Roaring lions tearing their prey open their

mouths wide against me....all my bones are out of joint....my

tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.' Such sentiments seem from

ANOTHER PLANET when you turn the page and read, 'The Lord is my

shepherd, I shall not be in want....Surely goodness and love will

follow me all the days of my life.'


     A similar DISCORD marks Psalm 102 and 103. The first

(subtitled ' A prayer of an afflicted man. When he is faint and

pours out his lament before the Lord.') eloquently expresses the

DESPAIR of an aging, weakened man who feels ABANDONED by all

friends and by GOD. It reads like a catalog of PAIN scratched out

by a hospital patient in a febrile state. The NEXT psalm,

however, a majestic hymn of PRAISE, includes NOT ONE note from

the MINOR key.......


     I have learned to appreciate Psalms precisely because it

does encompass BOTH points of view, often adjoined with no

calming transition. 'Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not

his benefits,' says Psalm 103. The author of its nearest neighbor

is DESPERATELY trying to RECALL God's benefits, no easy task in

his condition, bones burning like glowing embers, on a diet of

ashes and tears.

     I, for one, am glad my Bible includes both kinds of psalms.

A time may come when I feel like the author of Psalm 22 or 102,

and when that time comes I will take comfort in the fact that

spiritual giants - most notably, Jesus himself - have felt that

way too. And although I may groan and cry out and resist the

trial that entangles me in its net, I will also try to recall the

tranquil message of Psalm 23 and 103. By itself, Psalm 23 leads

to an easy-answer faith; by itself Psalm 22 leads to spiritual

despair; TOGETHER, the two offer a bracing mixture of REALISM and

HOPE.

     I have come to see these psalms as calling for different

KINDS of faith. Psalm 23 models CHILDLIKE faith, and Psalm 22

models FIDELITY, a deeper, more mysterious kind of faith. Life

with God may include BOTH. 

     We may experience times of unusual closeness, when prayers

are answered in an  OBVIOUS way and God seems INTIMATE and

CARING. We may also experience DARK times, when God stays SILENT,

when nothing works according to formula and all the Bible's

PROMISES seem GLARINGLY false. Fidelity involves learning to

TRUST that, out BEYOND the perimeter of DARKNESS, God still

REIGNS and has NOT abandoned us, no matter how it MAY appear.

     The 150 psalms are as DIFFICULT, DISORDERED, and MESSY as

life itself, a fact that can bring unexpected comfort. Kathleen

Norris describes in THE CLOISTER WALK how she has learned to

bring the psalms into her current situation by 'praying the

news' :

     

     ' Psalm 74's lament on the violation of sacred space.....has

     become for me a  prayer for the victims and perpetrators of

     domestic violence.....Hearing Psalm 79.....as I read of the

     civil war in the Balkans forces me to reflect on the evil

     that tribalism and violence, often justified by religion,

     continue to inflict on our world.....The psalms mirror our

     world but do not allow us to become voyeurs. In a nation

     unwilling to look at its own violence, they force us to

     recognize our part in it. They make us re-examine our

     values.'


     Here is what Psalms can do for a person in DISTRESS. In

1977, at the height of the Cold War, Anatoly Shcharansky, a

brilliant young mathematician and chess player, was arrested by

the KGB for his repeated attempts to emigrate to Israel. He spent

thirteen years inside the Soviet Gulag. From morning to evening

Shcharansky read and studied all 150 psalms (in Hebrew). 'What

does this give me?' he asked in a letter: 'Gradually, my feeling

of great loss and sorrow changed to one of bright hopes.'

     Shcharansky so cherished his book of Psalms, in fact, that

when the guards took it away from him, he lay in the snow,

refusing to move, until they returned it.

     During those thirteen years, his wife travelled around the

world campaigning for his release. Accepting an honorary degree

on his behalf, she told the university audience, 'In a lonely

cell in Chistopol prison, locked alone with the Psalms of David,

Anatoly found expression for his innermost feelings in the

outpourings of the King of Israel thousands of years ago.'


SOUL THERAPY


     The psalms give me a model of spiritual therapy. I once

wrote a book titled DISAPPOINTMENT WITH GOD, and my publishers

initially worried over the title......It seemed faintly heretical

to introduce a book with a negative title.....

     I the process of writing the book, however, I found that the

Bible includes detailed accounts of people sorely DISAPPOINTED

with God - to put it mildly. Not only Job and Moses have it out

with God; so do Habakkuk, Jeremiah, and many of the unnamed

psalmists. Some psalms merit titles like 'Furious with God,'

'Betrayed by God,' 'Abandoned by God.' 'In despair with God.'

     Consider a few lines from Psalm 89:


     'How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?

     How long will your wrath burn like fire?

     For what futility you have created men?'


     O these sentiments from Psalm 88:


     'Why, O Lord, do you reject me

     and hide your face from me?....

     the darkness is my closest friend.'


     It may seem strange for sacred writings to include such

scenes of spiritual failure, but actually their inclusion

reflects an important principle of therapy......


     Kathleen Norris writes of a Catholic sister who counsels

troubled women - displaced homemakers, abused wives, women

returning to college after years away - and finds that Psalms

offers a helpful pattern of expressing rage that the church often

tries to repress. 'Bear it up; keep smiling; suffering makes you

strong,' say some spiritual advisors - but not the psalmists

.......rather, they express emotions vividly and loudly,

directing their feelings primarily at God.

     The 150 psalms present a mosaic of spiritual therapy in

progress. Doubt, paranoia, giddiness, meanness, delight hatred.

Such stewings of emotions, which I once saw as hopeless disarray,

I now see as a sign of health. 

     From Psalms I have learned that I can rightfully bring to

God WHATEVER I feel about him. I need not paper over my failures

and try to clean up my own rottenness; far better to bring those

weaknesses to God, who alone has the power to heal.

     No psalm demonstrates healing power better than Psalm 51,

credited to David after his sordid affair with Bathsheba (see 2

Samuel 11 and 12)......


     Walter Brueggemann has coined the term 'psalms of

disorientation' to describe those psalms that express confusion,

confession, and doubt. 

     Typically, the writer begins by begging God to rescue him

from his desperate straits. He may weave poetic images of how he

has been wronged, appeal to God's sense of justice, even taunt

God: 'What good can I do you when I'm dead? How can I praise you

there?' The very act of venting these feelings allows the author

to attain a better perspective. He reflects on better times,

remembers answered prayers of the past, concedes favors that he

may have overlooked. By the end of the psalm, he moves towards

praise and thanksgiving. He feels heard and cleansed. The psalm,

or prayer, works out the transformation.


     Psalm 71 gives an example of how this 'spiritual reality

therapy' may work. The stanzas move from URGENT PLEAS for God's

HELP to tentative DECLARATIONS OF FAITH to NEW FEARS for the

future. By the END the poet is praising God for his FAITHFULNESS.

     Forced memory, of God's MIRACLES for Israel and God's PAST

INTIMACY in his own life, has put to rest, for the present, some

of the poet's fundamental DOUBTS. 

     

     Many psalms convey this spirit of 'Lord, I believe, help my

unbelief,' a way of talking oneself into FAITH when EMOTIONS are

WAVERING.


     The odd mixture of psalms of CURSING, psalms of PRAISE, and

psalms of CONFESSION no longer jars me as it once did. Instead, I

am continually amazed by the spiritual wholeness of the Hebrew

poets, who sought to INCLUDE GOD in EVERY area of life by

bringing to God EVERY EMOTION experienced in DAILY activity. One

need not 'dress up' or 'put on a face' to meet God/ There are no

walled-off areas; God can be TRUSTED with REALITY.

     For the Hebrew poets, God represented a reality MORE SOLID

than their own WHIPSAW EMOTIONS or the checkered history of their

people. They WRESTLED with God over EVERY FACET of their lives,

and in the end it was the very act of wrestling that proved their

FAITH......


     I have a friend, Harold Fickett, who retires for days at a

time to a nearby monastery. Many monastic orders recite the

psalms aloud morning, noon, and evening......Reflecting on this

time with the monks, Harold wrote that:


     The Psalms supply me with the words that I need and

     sometimes want to say to my God. Words that celebrate his

     reality: 'The heavens declare the glory of God.' Words

     that confess his action in my life: 'You have turned my

     mourning into dancing.' Words that express my utter

     dependence: 'In my mother's womb, you formed me.' Words that

     convey my hoped-for intimacy: 'This one thing I desire, that

     I might dwell in the house of the Lord forever.' The Psalms

     tutor my soul in my love for God.                    


End of quotes from the book "The Bible Jesus Read" by Philip

Yancey. To be continued with a final third section.


                 ..........................


Compiled October 2001


To be continued


 

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