Quotes About Psalms

We gather for prayer, and reading the Bible, and singing the songs of David.

Arno Penzias, the Nobel Prize–winning scientist who codiscovered the cosmic microwave background radiation that provided strong support for the Big Bang in the first place, states, "The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five Books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.

Reports from witnesses including the landlady of the King's Head in Ratcliffe say that the Protestants met in a back room of the inn, ordered a fire, beer and a roasted pig, and then sat and stood around the table, while one read a selection of psalms and the minister preached and shared bread and wine. The staff also noticed that deacons collected money for the poor and prisoners, and that members called each other 'brother'.

Lament is always voiced in the hope that redemption is possible. Psalms and songs of disorientation are always rooted in a failed orientation and long for the time when we will be able to sing new songs of reorientation. Lament keeps us alive with hope when the temptation is to surrender to a defeated numbness.[273]

Read the psalms out loud to God, allowing the words to become your own. Then write out your own specific prayers to him as well. It will amaze you when you go back later and see the ways that God answered your prayers.

The Psalms are pure praise inspired by the breath of God. Praise is a matter of life and breath. As long as we have breath, we are told to praise the Lord. The Psalms release an anointing of praise that will lift heaviness off the human heart. The Psalms are meant to do to you what they did to David; they will bring you from your cave of despair into the glad presence of the King who likes you just the way you are.

For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms.

If we are to pray well, we too must discover the Lord to whom we speak, and if we use the Psalms in our prayer we will stand a better chance of sharing in the discovery which lies hidden in their words for all generations. For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms.

St. Augustine adds that God has taught us to praise Him, in the Psalms, not in order that He may get something out of this praise, but in order that we may be made better by it.

But there is nothing to prevent a layman from taking just one Psalm a day, for instance in his night prayers, and reciting it thoughtfully, pausing to meditate on the lines which have the deepest meaning for him.

Monastic people have long known--and I've experienced it in a small way myself--that the communal reciting, chanting, and singing of the psalms brings a unique sense of wholeness and order to their day, and even establishes the rhythm of their lives.

That morning, for all I sat behind the stinking coffin of a murdered man, I found myself lulled along by the monks' beautiful, polyphonic chant. The psalms, and the Latin reading from Job, struck a chord. 'And thou sayest, how doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seest not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.' Thick clouds indeed, I thought. I am still in a fog here.

But if you like shallow lyrics and easy-to-hum-along-with ditties, then you're not going to enjoy the Psalms. The Psalms are for folks who have decided that music is an art that requires the discipline of keen thinking and a heart that is right before God. It is music for the mature. It is not a superficial statement. There are a few, of course, that are very popular: Psalms 1, 23, 91, 100, and parts of 119. But for the most part, only the

John Calvin called the Book of Psalms 'an anatomy of all parts of the soul.' All the range of emotions are expressed; the Psalms weave an emotional fabric for the human soul. These inspired lyrics take us by the hand and train us in proper emotion. They lead us to emotional maturity.

The Psalms draw a hard and fast distinction between the righteous and the wicked, something that is not appreciated in a period of religious syncretism.

Permission to acknowledge our anger before God, however, is not license to act on our anger against others. Rather, as these psalms suggest, we should leave action against our enemies in the hands of God.

The claim in Psalms that "the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His works" (Psalms 19:2) is not a mere metaphor. The study of nature, even with all its intellectual rigor, is filled with spiritual wonder.

The greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife.

An Israelite could not have sung the familiar song 'God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, he's so good to me' (though the words echo the Psalms) without being reminded also of its ethical consequence: 'God asks me to show that goodness to others.

To sum up, singing or praying the psalms is a performative, typically a commissive, act: saying these solemn words to God alters one's relationship in a way that mere listening does not. This

In singing the psalms, one is actively committing oneself to following the God-approved life. This is what we are doing singing the psalms.

reminding us of Psalm 2, which asks: "Why do the heathen rage?

Romans contains some seventy-four references to the Old Testament (mostly from Psalms and Isaiah). "It is written" occurs nineteen times in this book, more than half of all the times Paul uses the phrase.

The Word of God is forever settled in heaven. Therefore, I establish His Word upon this earth" (Psalms 119:89).