Psalms.

Wow. God has been so good lately... well not just lately... always. I guess I tend to mess things up a lot. He's so good to me, and I'm so bad to Him. Hmm.. funny how that always works.



I've been reading the Psalms... if you never have or you tend to get intimidated by the 150 chapters in the book... don't be. Because that's the beauty of the Psalms.. the fact that there are so many songs.. so many poems... so many emotions.. you're bound to connect with the writer. "Psalms" comes from the Hebrew word "Tehilim", תהילים, which means "praises". In Greek, it comes from the word "psalmoi" originally meaning "songs sung to a harp" and from "psallein" meaning "play on a stringed instrument". For me, music speaks to my heart in a way that nothing else can... and the Psalms are lyrics. I can think of few things more beautiful.



So I read Psalm 51 the other night. Two verses in that song just grabbed me... and shook me to the core. The first was verse 12: "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant in me a willing spirit, to sustain me." Things for me have been I guess what one could call mundane lately. How refreshing to think on salvation.. the joy of salvation. That verse was a prayer for me. Then I read on and came upon verse 17: "My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." This whole sacrifice business has been coming up a lot. Rob Bell talked a lot about it.. and the previous verse in chapter 51, verse 16, says that God will not be pleased with burnt offerings or any of that. He wants a different kind of sacrifice. He wants our hearts... our broken hearts. And oh how mine has been so broken. I can think of nothing I would rather do than place my broken heart into the hands of the Father... into the hands of my Lover... into the hands of the Healer. Of course. The Healer.


Sometimes it's hard for me to read the Word. But then.. I do. And I realize it's alive. It's alive and it's connecting with me. And it will connect with you... because it's not a collection of old stories, or rules, or literature written by old kings. No, it is my story too. It's your story too. And every time I read it.. it's a way for God to speak to me.