Psalms

Psalm 4

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“Ponder it on your bed, and be still.” (4:5)

Rare is the day on which all of our work, in the broadest sense of the word, gets done. We nearly always leave something undone, something we could have done better. That’s OK – it’s part of being human. Being human, though, is just a bit less than being Divine – which means that while messing up is expected, so is self-analysis. As you lie in bed at night, calm your breathing and review your day. Choose something that could have gone better. Even if 90% of the problem was caused by someone else’s mistake, identify one thing that you contributed to the problem and one thing that you could have done to avert or lessen it.

Psalm 3

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“I lie down and sleep and wake again.” (3:6)

We sleep to recharge ourselves so that we can wake up in the morning with energy, ready to embrace any and all possibilities that the day might present to us, with a smile and a positive attitude. It is a blessing of the highest order to be able to lie down and know that we’ve given our best effort over the course of the day. When we can lie down with satisfaction for how we’ve conducted ourselves and with no regrets for the things that we have left undone or the things that we have to apologize for tomorrow, we can sleep the sleep of the righteous.

Psalm 2

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“Break the cords of their yoke …” (2:3)

A mature adult is never completely free from responsibilities, but we choose what yokes we wear. Some yokes are harder to remove than others. The yokes of addiction to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs physically attach themselves to our shoulders, whereas the yokes of addiction to shopping or our iDevices rest so comfortably and naturally that we are loathe to remove them. The yoke is the device that drives the cart. We can choose to take on the yokes of family, service to God and community, and friends first and let those activities be our priorities, rather than yoking ourselves to other things that distract us from what should be most important.

Psalm 1

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“A tree planted beside streams of water …” (1:3)

A well-watered tree planted in good soil will flourish. Everything that goes into my body — the food I eat, the liquids I drink, the air I breathe, the sounds and words that I listen to and the images that I watch, will affect my physical and spiritual health. I like action movies but lately, at my wife’s urging, I have been averting my eyes during the most violent scenes. Negative speech, much the same as sugary, fat-laden junk food, creates an intoxicating buzz for a moment, followed by a general feeling of malaise. A healthy lifestyle which includes high doses of gossip is like a vegan diet with occasional splurges of bacon cheeseburgers.

Psalm Reflections

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It’s been about six months since I completed my cycle of psalm reflections. Writing a 300 words reflection every week about a verse from a Psalm was rewarding, even though at time it was a difficult discipline. The Psalms are powerful poetry, reflecting a spectrum of human experience reaching out towards God. I appreciated the time that I spent every week reading the Psalm, trying to understand its message, and searching within that for the message it had for me. I miss it, but I’ve not been sure whether I am prepared to commit the time to do it again in the same way. Reading one Psalm a week was a three year commitment.

After much thought, I decided I missed the Psalms and want to go back through them again, but I also decided to streamline and accelerate the pace. 2017 will be the year of the Psalms mini-reflection. I’m going to try to go through the Psalms again and write brief reflections of approximately 100 words, each one focusing on a short sentence or phrase. And I’m going to try to publish three a week, so I can finish the project in one year.

I’d love to read your comments. I’d also love to see you keep up and write your own reflections and share them in the comments.