Talk to God. Praise God ALONE. Prayer for the leader is focused on the leader’s serving the good of the poor of your people.
Tag Archives: Psalms
Who is the “you” in “fret not yourself” (Psalm 37) ?
To cover complacency, inaction, and complicity in injustice by appropriating to oneself the “Fret not” that was spoken to someone else is bad faith.
You, me, them: the moral mindset of Psalm 26
Worship and prayer depend on a certain self-location vis-à-vis the divine “You” and the profane “they/them.” In the attached display of the ESV text of Psalm 26 I have used blue highlighting for the divine “You,” green for the worshipful and morally resolute “I,” and yellow for the profane “they/them.” It would be a mistakeContinue reading “You, me, them: the moral mindset of Psalm 26”
The most important thing we can say to each other (Psalm 95)
What is the one thing that we human beings can habitually say to each other in order to stand our best chance of fulfilling our telos as human beings?
This is my story, this is my song: the story we enter when praying Psalms 95–97
In the book of Psalms, the entries in the 90s are grand, profound, and glorious. Is this because the reader who enters into them gets grand and glorious feelings, or because the aesthetic quality of their poesy is high, or because they refer to realities that are objectively awesome? (And I realize that “objectively awesome”Continue reading “This is my story, this is my song: the story we enter when praying Psalms 95–97”
A thousand days elsewhere: reading Psalm 84 on Ash Wednesday 2021
We have been living the Thousand Days Elsewhere, but even now The Presence is available. Let us journey toward joy together.
How to ruin the perfect prayer (Psalm 63)
Why should we let the Psalms—or our own prayers—be ruined by the inclusion of unworthy emotions and desires?
Follow the bulls: part 2, the return of the bulls (Psalm 51)
This is the only possible solution to the problem of failure in self-knowledge, the problem of the locked room of delusion and self-deception: to be known by The Other, to invite and open oneself to the knowledge that only The Other has, but which The Other has offered to share.
Fearing and not fearing (Psalm 56)
Fear is a fearful thing. It can cause blindness. It can undermine our rationality. It can make us shoot our wife or betray our country. It can be both a symptom and a cause of unfaithfulness to our God.
Follow the bulls: part 1, the banishment of the bulls (Psalm 50)
Psalm 50 is a psalm of judgment. When God’s people fall in with thieves and adulterers, God rejects their sacrifices.
