Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is the King over all the earth. Praise him with a psalm. [Psalm 47:6-7 (NLT)]
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer! [Joseph Scriven]
“That’s more like it!” I thought as I read Psalm 47; I certainly preferred it to the imprecations in the previous set of Psalms I’d read. Having been reading the Bible in chronological rather than canonical order, that last set of psalms followed David’s trials and were ones of lament and grievance. It was only after reading the duties in the Temple that I finally came to the praise psalms. These psalms of worship, adoration, and thanksgiving seem more appropriate for Israel’s book of prayers and hymns than the earlier ones about wickedness, treachery, calamity, and vengeance.
Although I prefer the joyful psalms, there is a reason Israel’s prayer book has lasted over 3,000 years and continues to be our prayer book today. Rather than a sappy feel-good book of poetry, Psalms reflects the gamut of human experience and emotions. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, I’m surprised He didn’t direct them to the Psalms for guidance. Prayer simply is a conversation with God and it’s in the book of Psalms that we witness humanity speaking to God as well as God speaking to us!
Prayer is what we do when we realize we aren’t the ones in control and the Psalms show us how to be honest with God. Their words are intense, raw, and honest. Concealing nothing, they encompass everything from extreme joy to overwhelming sorrow and fiercest anger to the deepest regret. If the Psalmist is suffering, fearful, angry, depressed, or exhausted, he says so as readily as he expresses his elation, adoration, and thanksgiving. Never pretending that all is well when it isn’t, he fearlessly lays out his feelings before God. Wretchedness and joy, pain and jubilation, wickedness and virtue, despair and hope, grief and thanksgiving, fear and confidence: all are articulated.
When I seriously evaluate my own prayer life, I’m nowhere near as unguarded and straight-forward as the psalmists. Of course, God knows my personal struggles but, unlike David and the other psalmists, I’m not as willing to lay them so passionately and openly at His feet. If we don’t pray with abandonment and freely bring God our outrage, anger, fear, and disappointment as well as our thanks, joy, and praise, then to whom can we bring it? When Joseph Scriven wrote the words, “Take it to the Lord in prayer,” he meant all of it, not just the pretty stuff. I’m sure God would prefer honest words of grievance to false words of praise any day.
A human heart is like a ship on a wild sea, driven by the storm-winds from the four quarters of the world. Here it is struck with fear and worry about coming disaster; there comes grief and sadness because of present evil. Here breathes a breeze of hope and of expectation of happiness to come; there blows security and joy in present blessings. These storm-winds teach us to speak with earnestness, and open the heart, and pour out what lies at the bottom of it. … What is the greatest thing in the Psalter but this earnest speaking amid these storm-winds of every kind? Where does one find such words of joy as in the psalms of praise and thanksgiving? … On the other hand, where do you find deeper, more sorrowful, more pitiful words of sadness than in the psalms of lamentation? … And, as was said, it is the best thing of all that they speak these words to God and with God. [Martin Luther, Preface to the Psalter]
The Sinner’s Shack Gentlemen’s Club wanted to open an establishment in a small Midwest community. It’s a rather conservative town and, since there’s nothing gentlemanly about the goings on in such an establishment, many people were up in arms about it. When the Holier than Thou Evangelical Church started a campaign to halt the tawdry business from locating in town, prayer sessions were held three times a day and the City Council was inundated with letters and calls of protests. Unfortunately, in spite of the prayers and pleas, proper zoning was attained and construction on the “gentlemen’s club” began. Just a day before its grand opening, however, lightning struck the Sinner’s Shack and it burned to the ground!
Last Christmas Eve, people stood in long lines at gas stations and convenience stores to make a last-minute purchase, but it wasn’t for a Christmas gift; they wanted a Powerball ticket! Christmas morning, someone woke up to discover they won $1.817 billion and had become a billionaire overnight! By choosing the lump sum payout of $835 million, their status dwindled to multi-millionaire. Once taxes were paid, approximately $550 million remained which, in anybody’s book, still counts as a fortune!
The only prayer found in Proverbs is that of Agur in Proverbs 30. While he probably was one of the sages of Solomon’s day who helped compile the proverbs, other than saying he was the son of Jakeh, we really know nothing about the man. In his prayer, Agur asked for two unusual things, the first of which was that God would, “Remove far from me falsehood and lying.” His second prayer was that God give him neither poverty nor riches. These are not typical requests and I suspect that we’ve prayed neither prayer. The first one because we don’t see the need and the second because we can’t imagine not wanting something a little more than just enough!
The orange butterfly lay perfectly still in the middle of the trail. When we knelt down by it, the Viceroy fluttered its wings but only managed to skim a few inches across the gravel. As intact as it looked, one wing was entirely useless. A closer look led me to believe it had been hit by a speeding cyclist. To protect the creature from any more bikes or feet, we managed to get it off the trail into the grass. Unfortunately, without some sort of butterfly super-glue to reattach the loose wing, while we could help for the time being, we couldn’t save it.
Things were going well for Moses in Midian: he was happily married, with a family, and tending his father-in-law’s sheep. Then God interrupted his comfortable life with a burning bush and a major task: free the Israelites. Moses reacted the way most of us would by questioning God. Who am I to do this? Who do I say sent me? What if they don’t believe me? He then told God he simply wasn’t up to the task. Not one to be thwarted, God responded to all of Moses’ concerns. He would be with him, provide the words, the proof, and even Aaron to do the talking. In short, God promised to provide and so Moses obeyed.
