Inform Your 'Faith'

    Psalmody in most discourse is more often than not considered exclusively in terms of liturgical forms, musical expression, congregational singing and the like. I will be the first to concede the appropriateness and relevance of this discourse. After all the Psalter is entitled 'Praises' according the Hebrew corpus. And of course this omnibus collection came to be recognized by the rabbis as the 'Book of Praises' which became a mainstay that more or less defined their worship, both the content of worship and the spirit of worship. (Ironically, most traditional, formal and/or liturgical practitioners fail miserably to practice or even acknowledge the latter when strictly incorporating psalms into their worship and in so doing misrepresent the Psalter).  Oh yea, the superscripts of most Psalms substantiate that the compositions were later presented as musical praise. Paul even writes to the Ephesians and Colossians about 'singing to one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs'.

   All the evidence evinces this usage and consideration of psalms to be inarguably viable. However, it seems to me that another far more valuable use for the Psalms is being unwittingly truncated due to the fact that  the meaning of the Psalms is so often {mis}interpreted as primarily liturgical as a result of the aforementioned emphases. It is quite possible that the more sublime meaning of the Psalms has precipitously escaped us by and large as a result.

   The meaning of the Psalms is not to be found in the ebb and flow of singing the Psalms. Quite the contrary the overarching meaning of the Psalms is to be found in living the Psalms! Anybody can go through the liturgical mode of vocalizing and musically performing the Psalms while no psalmodic resonance is to be found within the reverberations of their 'living'.  After all the Psalms were actually lived long before they were designated a template for liturgical forms of singing. Psalm singing should proceed out of Psalm living.

   The profundity of the Psalter is to be understood in terms of living life coram deo; before God.  The title 'Psalms' or 'Praises' is inextricably bound to the entirety of life represented by the anecdotal glimpses of 'living' found in the compositions of all the individual contributors. The Psalms are to be lived not merely sung or performed! We are to be living Psalms just as Asaph, the sons of Korah, David, Moses and the other authors of the Psalms were as they grappled with the full range of human experience. Our lives are to be Psalms of praise during anxiety, discontent, despair, ecstasy, victory and all other experiences of this life. While our experiences will vary His glory is constant.

   We should turn to the Psalms so that our Lord, Jesus Christ can show and teach us, through the activity of His Holy Spirit, how to live lives of praise unto His glory.  After all He is the truly blessed (or happy according to the Hebrew text) man of Psalm 1 who alone lived a psalmodic life that we should aspire to live ourselves and who alone can empower us by the inward work of that same life resonating within us to live because He has so rapturously lived it.