I'm wired to spend all my free days with a small stack of books and a full playlist of music. On any given morning, I read a portion of the Bible, then depending on my day, I happily juggle and organize the rest of my daily readings. Reading feeds the analytical side of my mind that loves exploring thoughts, but sometimes I come across things that feel too big to just think through. Those are the times that call for music.
Years ago, I built a song playlist during one of the hardest seasons of my life. It was a devastating season of pain, and for reasons I still keep to myself, I had to carry the pain in silence. Knowing that I didn’t have an outlet of conversation, I prayed for some other way to work through the sorrow. I knew I couldn’t just turn to my regular habit of deep reading; I felt like that particular moment’s agony was just too visceral to process in my usual scholastic way. Although, honestly, the building of the playlist was a fairly analytical process, too.
I went looking for a version of each of the 150 biblical psalms. I had to listen to each one and compare the words to the biblical text. You'd be surprised how much liberty musicians will take with a song to make a good rhyme! I discovered that many of the psalms had few modern renditions that met my criteria., but eventually I did finish the song list and began my new daily rhythm. I would wake up each morning, say a prayer, and press play. I've since learned I was keeping an ancient practice in a modern way.
Monks from the early centuries prayed and sang the psalms throughout the day and night. I had an opportunity to stay with the Benedictine monks at St. John's in Minnesota a few years ago, and I discovered that they still keep that practice with thankful hearts. Their days are marked by gathering to chant the psalms. They return again and again to words that have been prayed by so many generations before them.
Singing the psalms doesn’t depend on any one person's ability to find the right words. The beautiful words already exist, and we are invited to carry those words in community. This past week, our community gathered around Psalm 32, a song that touches on the burden of silence. The psalmist remembers keeping quiet about his wrongdoing and feeling its weight in his bones. When he finally acknowledges it to God, he discovers forgiveness. Admittedly, my silence was different since I was holding something entrusted to me and worrying about what might happen. Yet I recognize something familiar in the psalmist's experience: the weight of silence and our deeply human need to bring it into God's presence.
I understand something of the psalmist's longing for a place where nothing has to remain hidden. Then comes the beautiful declaration that God is a hiding place, surrounding us with songs of deliverance. There are songs saturating the world around us. I would not be surprised to find that many of us are carrying a silence right now, but the songs are still playing. Whatever you may be carrying, I hope you'll find a little time to sit with the psalms this week. Let their words become your prayers when your own words are hard to find, and may you discover that God is always surrounding you with songs of deliverance.
