HYMN BOOK
Why are we
taking time to look at the Psalms, this "book of praises"? Many of us
are familiar with the modern worship songs. Why bother with an old collection
of praises? We are exploring the Psalms for the next few weeks because I hope
we can nurture still further our responses to God in worship. There are so many
ways to respond to God found in the Psalms that we haven’t really explored in
our lives.
The whole collection is put under the heading of praise. But
what exactly does praise mean? Often we equate it with thanksgiving, but while
this is part of praise, it is not the first or most important part. “The dead do not praise the Lord,
all those gone down into silence” (Psalm 115:17). Death is characterized by lack of praise;
on the other hand, life manifests itself in praise. When we pass from death to
life in placing our trust in Jesus Christ, we have passed from a life of
praise-lessness to one that is continually filled with praise. There cannot be
true life with God without praising him. Praising God and being a living
creature belong together in the Bible. Praise is an act of religious memory; we
are from God and en route (on the way) to God. It is a corrective to pride and
arrogance, because it helps us to remember that we depend on God and are God’s
creatures.
Is praise unnatural for you? You feel you almost have to
force it out of you? Have you wondered why? Around the 2nd century, A.D.,
Claudius Ptolemaeus espoused a model to explain the motions of the heavens. In
what was after that known as the Ptolemaic system, the Earth was the center of
the Universe and all other celestial bodies (the stars, the sun) revolved
around it in concentric circles. This Geocentric model was accepted for over
1000 years by the vast majority of Europeans to be the correct cosmological
model. This understanding came to form the basis for a very important spiritual
belief—that humans were at the center of the Universe! But in 1543 Nicolaus
Copernicus revealed this primordial error and proved that, in fact, the Earth
was not stationary—it was only one planet circling around one of billions of
stars. His discoveries were the keys that unlocked the mathematics of the
Universe, and the Copernican Revolution was born. The people of the time were
not excited about his discovery. Earth no longer held a preferred place in the
cosmos, and as a result, neither did humanity. Man’s ego took a bashing with
the revelation shared by Copernicus. This is the same with us in our relationship with God. Previously, before we paid attention to God, all of life revolved around us… what we thought up, what we built, we attributed all them to ourselves. “白手起家”But when our attention is drawn to Jesus Christ, a “Copernican Revolution” sort of re-orientation took place. We begin to reckon with a God who claims the central place in our lives. All our successes we can no longer be attributed to our hard work and efforts but gifts from the Lord, the Giver.
When our praises are scarce, perhaps we have
not really come to see God as the centre of our lives… we have difficulty
taking our place among all that exists around us, with the rest of creation as
totally dependent on God for all things. Reflection Question: Does that explain your lack of praise or participation in praise? Is our God, the source and root of all your life? Where is God vis-à-vis everything else in your life? Where are you in the practice of praise?
As
we praise continually, our identities as the created ones, dependent on God for
all of our lives will be repeatedly affirmed in us. That will open our eyes to
the many gifts of God that remain invisible to us for so long.
PRAYER BOOK
The Psalms take our human life, in all its dimensions, very
seriously. And in this book of praise are many sung prayers, full of “heart”
and full of feeling. They are born out of the everyday interactions of our
lives, in our deeply felt blessings and joys and our deeply suffered pains and
hurts. There are approximately 50 psalms that are cries of pain. It is a type
of prayer with which we are not very familiar and are not comfortable. But it
is a thoroughly biblical form of prayer, occurring in both the Old and New
Testaments. We learn from the Psalmist the language of faith seeking answers to
heartfelt questions: “Why?” (Psalm 10:1) and “How long?” (Psalm 13:2). These
imply, “I do not understand what is happening” and “I cannot hold on much
longer!” for the afflictions which all of us can identify with: sickness (Psalm
6:3), danger and mistreatment by others (Psalm 6:8), loneliness and alienation (Psalm
31:12), shame and humiliation (Psalm 4:3), old age (Psalm 71:9) and death
(Psalm 28:1). 
Many of us become fearful of expressing our doubts about God. We
almost feel that we need to dress up our raw emotions before we unleash them (let
them loose) before the Lord. But the Psalmists show us that God is not troubled
about those emotions as we are. In many of these
Psalms, we find the Psalmists coming to wrestle with God, to argue with the
Lord. A large number of them also show us how their thoughts turned at some
point to a place of rest where their hearts and minds are finally submissive
and receptive to what God would bring to pass, even if it is completely
different from what they had wanted. As they waited on the Lord in prayer and
opened their hearts to his will, they were able to gain strength, find the
resource to backtrack, to return, etc. The pain is in our lives because of the
misalignment between our goals and God’s purposes. It takes that wrestling,
sorting out with the Lord till we are aligned with His will that brings rest. Reflection Question: Where do you go when you are disorientation due to your afflictions? What is our recourse for the experience of a gaping lack/hole in our lives? Do we leave the church, curl us somewhere with our unresolved anger, our existing doubts, etc.?
The Psalmist points us to the way: We need to return to the One who is able to re-orientate us. God is not afraid of you coming to wrestle with him. Where are you in the practice of prayer? Nothing in our experience is foreign to our God, or too confusing and conflicting for Him.
CONCLUSION
All our experiences in life cannot be separated from
experiences of joy and sorrow and in the Psalms we have a rich resource. In it
we find resources to
·
give praise for God’s ongoing
and gracious care in our lives—orientation.· Express our need when our lives take a turn for the worse
· Express our thanksgiving when we experience God’s deliverance and help.
Putting
God at the centre is not just a personal pursuit, but the responsibility of the
community. Aligning ourselves to God’s purpose and call is not just a personal
assignment but the responsibility of the community. It is our individual
experiences of praise that feed the communal praise on Sundays. It is our
individual experiences of prayer that contribute to the communal plea at our
prayer meetings.
Reflection Question: How are we doing individually in the praising the Lord? How
are we doing individually in praying to the Lord? How are we doing communally?
[1] **From her earliest childhood years
writing simple songs and poems with her father, through her twelve years as an
overseas missionary, to her present, multi-faceted career as an author,
lyricist/songwriter and conference speaker, Mary has always been adept at using
words to communicate her heart to others. She is the President of CQK Records
& Music of Dallas, Texas, a company which creates and produces songs in a
panorama of musical styles for a variety of audiences, She is the host of
"I Write the Songs," a nationally syndicated radio talk show,
especially created to inspire and instruct the more than 40 million aspiring
songwriters in the U.S. Mary is a frequent public speaker and seminar lecturer
and teacher of songwriting in her popular Living Room Seminars. She is a
Contributing Editor for The Internet Writing Journal ®. You
can visit her website at: www.cqkmusic.com. You can reach Mary by email.
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