Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Stealing From Liz...

Okay, so I'm sitting here a little past midnight, trying to think of what I should put on here for today. Nothing was really coming to mind and I went to Liz's blog (my partner in crime) where she put up a huge section of the Psalms as a verse for the day.

It's Psalm 51 (http://bible.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?new=1&word=Ps.+51&section=0&version=msg&language=en). Now, I know for most people, that means absolutely nothing more than it comes after Psalm 50. But if you read it, it's really, really depressing. It was written by King David after it was found out that he had an affair with a woman and then had her husband killed so he could marry her and try to cover it up. Notice, it wasn't written after he had done something stupid, but after someone found out about it, then he felt bad.

It's one of my favorite Psalms because it describes how I feel a lot. This feeling of, "Crap, I've screwed up again, please don't stop loving me because of my stupidity God." It's not a happy-clappy Sunday morning worship chorus. And yet, it's a psalm. God deemed it a worship song. Look at verse 17. "I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered." I've been thinking a lot about how lately we as a society driven by merchandising have been reducing "worship" to a style of music, one that will sell in the "worship" section of CD's at Wal-Mart. Music that is given to worship in God is full of songs that we sing at church Sunday morning to make us feel better, but they're also songs like this Psalm. "My sins are staring me down." "Don't throw me out with the trash." "Bring me back from gray exile." Not typical lines you think of when you think of singing to God. But in it's purest form, it's worship just by the fact alone that David recognized there was a God and instead of directing his thoughts and talents somewhere else, he gave them to God, even if they weren't all "Joyful, Joyful, we adore Thee."

Sorry, it kinda got me started and I went for a while there. I'm going to go work on some Psalms of my own now.

T

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