Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 65: The Crown Upon the YearThis is one of the great agricultural psalms, and you cannot read it slowly without smelling damp earth. God, David tells us, visits the earth. He doesn't merely sustain it from a distance; he comes down with a watering can. He waters the ridges. He settles the furrows. He softens the soil with showers. The verbs are tender, almost domestic — the sort of attention a gardener gives, not the management of a corporation. And then comes the line that should be carved over every farmer's gate: "Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness." God walks through the seasons, and goodness leaks from his footprints. The little hills rejoice on every side. The valleys, covered in corn, shout for joy. If you have ever wondered whether creation itself worships, the psalm answers: it has been doing so all along. We are simply latecomers to a song the pastures have been singing for a long time.00:00 Praise Waiteth for Thee in Sion00:20 Iniquities Prevail Against Me00:40 Blessed Is the Man Whom Thou Choosest01:00 The Confidence of All the Ends of the Earth01:20 Thou Stillest the Noise of the Seas01:40 Thou Visitest the Earth02:00 Thou Crownest the Year With Thy Goodness02:20 The Little Hills Rejoice

Psalm 64: The Arrow That ReturnsWords, David tells us, can be weapons — and not the obvious kind. He is not afraid of swords here; he is afraid of tongues whetted like swords, of bitter words shot from secret places by men who have made a craft of slander. There is a particular cruelty in arrows you cannot see coming, and the wicked of this psalm are connoisseurs of the unseen wound. They congratulate themselves: "Who shall see them?" And then, with the suddenness of a closing trap, the psalm pivots: "But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded." The hidden archers are themselves seen. And the most terrible turn of all: "they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves." The weapon comes home. There is, it turns out, a Witness who watches the secret counsel — and a justice that does not need to invent new arrows when the old ones come back on their own.00:00 Hear My Voice, O God00:15 Tongues Whetted Like Swords00:30 Arrows Shot in Secret00:45 Who Shall See Them?01:00 But God Shall Shoot01:15 Their Own Tongue Returns01:30 The Righteous Shall Be Glad

Psalm 63: Thirst as a Form of WorshipDavid writes this in the actual wilderness — not the metaphorical kind we like to use in sermons, but the kind with sand in your sandals and no water for miles. And the first thing he does, parched, is praise. "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." Notice the daring: he does not pray for water. He turns his thirst itself into the prayer. And then comes the astonishing reversal: "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." The man with no food describes himself as feasting. This is not denial; it is the very opposite — it is the discovery that there is a hunger which, when honestly named, is already its own kind of feeding. The wilderness has not stopped him from worshipping. The wilderness has clarified what he was thirsty for all along.00:00 O God, Thou Art My God00:15 In a Dry and Thirsty Land00:30 Thy Lovingkindness Better Than Life00:45 Marrow and Fatness01:00 Meditation in the Night Watches01:15 The Shadow of Thy Wings01:30 My Soul Followeth Hard After Thee

Psalm 62: OnlyThe word that runs like a stubborn thread through this psalm is the small, sturdy word only. "He only is my rock and my salvation." "My soul, wait thou only upon God." It is a word that does the same work in the soul as a pruning knife does in a vineyard — cutting away every other place we had been thinking of leaning. David has watched men, including powerful ones, and concluded with a kind of weary clarity that they are a tottering fence, a bowing wall. Even when weighed against vanity itself, they come up lighter. And then comes one of the strangest sentences in the whole Psalter: "God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God." It is as though God spoke softly, just once, and David spent the rest of his life turning the sentence over in his hands until he could hear it twice. Some words you only need to hear once. You spend the rest of your life listening to them.00:00 Truly My Soul Waiteth00:20 A Bowing Wall, A Tottering Fence00:40 They Bless With Their Mouth01:00 He Only Is My Rock01:20 Trust in Him at All Times01:40 Men of High Degree Are a Lie02:00 God Hath Spoken Once

Psalm 61: The Rock That Is Higher Than IThere is a particular kind of prayer that begins not in the temple but at the edge of the map. "From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed." David has run out of geography. He has run out of strategies. And the petition that follows is one of the strangest and truest in all the Psalter: "lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Notice he does not ask for a different rock, or a stronger rock, or a more comfortable rock. He asks for higher ground than his own — ground he could not climb to alone. It is the prayer of a man who has finally understood that what he needs is not improvement but elevation. And then, with the candor of someone who has been answered before, he names what God has been all along: shelter, strong tower, the covert of wings. The end of the earth, it turns out, is not the end of God.00:00 Hear My Cry, O God00:15 From the End of the Earth00:30 The Rock That Is Higher00:45 The Covert of Thy Wings01:00 The Heritage of Those That Fear01:15 So Will I Sing Forever