I have been personally praying through a psalm a day for some time now. I don't always identify with what David or God is saying because there's not always the same situation in my life as was happening upon the penning of the psalm. But it seems like there's always a phrase in there or a declaration of who God is that catches me.
Pretty consistently, I find that the emotions David (or any other psalmist) go far beyond what I regularly experience or, at times, can even fathom. I just don't get it sometimes. He's saying words and I'm reading them but there is no connection between what he's communicating and what I'm getting. I might as well be reading a particle physics book or my little brother's latest lecture on orbital mechanics. I can read the words but have no idea what they mean.
Letters. Spaces. Punctuation.
No meaning.
But this is the Bible, right? God inspired it and I, as a preacher especially, should be on top of it. Right?
And this is one place where I see God growing me. I know it's true textually and I've seen it before experientially, just never to this level. God, through the psalms, evokes in me feelings and then gives me words for them. And it gives me a sense of just how far I have to go in my relationship with God and how much more of Him there is to experience.
I will say this of my journey so far: it has helped me understand what others are going through a little better. Maybe I can move from my emotional adolescence and enter grown-up life.
But that's just me thinking thoughts...
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