I was an intern serving as assistant minister between my second and
last year at seminary. Mrs. Ingold’s daughter had been confined to
bed for years. She died and I was to officiate my first funeral. The
senior minister was on vacation. I shall never forget it. I asked Mrs.
Ingold if she had any particular scripture she wished read at her
daughter’s funeral. She answered in an instant. “I would like the beloved Psalm 103. It is a psalm that tells who God is and does not ask
God for anything.”
So began my love affair with the book of Psalms. Jesus knew all the psalms by heart and prayed some of them on his cross - Psalm 22 especially. St. Augustine said that Jesus continues praying them through us as we pray them: “we recite this prayer of the Psalm in Him, and He recites in us.” Monasteries all over the world have daily chanted these beloved words for over 1500 years.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Psalms “The Prayer Book of the Bible.” In the psalms I have found the most reliable words about God and His desires. I am comforted that about one half of them are cries of pain and need that bounce back and forth between need and the testimony of the faithful that God answers and delivers. In the psalms I hear of a God who desires justice for the oppressed, of a God who removes our transgressions from us “as far as the east is from the west.”
When I don’t have words to pray to God, the psalms have given me those words. I use them as prayers of thanksgiving and praise, cries for help for myself and other sufferers, words to proclaim that our God who is on the side of the poor and oppressed, a God who sends a king who understands human pain and sin and does something about it on His Cross and Exaltation. I invite you to the Psalms and through them to find Jesus praying with you and answering you.
The Rev. Spottswood Graves
So began my love affair with the book of Psalms. Jesus knew all the psalms by heart and prayed some of them on his cross - Psalm 22 especially. St. Augustine said that Jesus continues praying them through us as we pray them: “we recite this prayer of the Psalm in Him, and He recites in us.” Monasteries all over the world have daily chanted these beloved words for over 1500 years.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Psalms “The Prayer Book of the Bible.” In the psalms I have found the most reliable words about God and His desires. I am comforted that about one half of them are cries of pain and need that bounce back and forth between need and the testimony of the faithful that God answers and delivers. In the psalms I hear of a God who desires justice for the oppressed, of a God who removes our transgressions from us “as far as the east is from the west.”
When I don’t have words to pray to God, the psalms have given me those words. I use them as prayers of thanksgiving and praise, cries for help for myself and other sufferers, words to proclaim that our God who is on the side of the poor and oppressed, a God who sends a king who understands human pain and sin and does something about it on His Cross and Exaltation. I invite you to the Psalms and through them to find Jesus praying with you and answering you.
The Rev. Spottswood Graves
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