Category Archives: psalms
Bless the Lord, my soul!
Bless the Lord, my soul! Lord God, how great you are, clothed in majesty and glory, wrapped in light as in a robe! You stretch out the heavens like a tent. Above the rains you build your dwelling. You make the clouds your chariot, and walk on the wings of the wind; you make the …
Storms
Storms. God’s own fireworks. He made the darkness his covering, the dark waters of the clouds, his tent. A brightness shone out before him with hailstones and flashes of fire. The Lord thundered in the heavens; the Most High let his voice be heard. He shot his arrows, scattered the foe, flashed his lightnings, and …
All times are in His hands
I don’t put my trust in the weather; I put my trust in God. All times are in His hands. We have had weeks of dryness, but even these speak to us of Him. This morning in Morning Prayer, we prayed these lines from Psalm 63: “My body pines for you like a dry, weary …
“for you loved them . . .”
This morning I opened my Liturgy of the Hours to the Office of Readings for today (Tuesday, Week II, Ordinary Time). The first psalm to be prayed is Psalm 44. In the American Liturgy of the Hours, before each psalm there are two subheadings. The first is a summary of the psalm. The second is …
All my longing is known to Thee
Another little gem of a comment on Psalm 38:9 by Amy Carmichael: Lord, all my longing is known to Thee, my sighing is not hidden from Thee. “Only a simple word. This afternoon, words would not come when I tried to pray, and this troubled me; and then it was as if He, Who is …
Look straight up and praise
I’m still delving deep into Amy Carmichael’s commentaries on the psalms. I can’t help but share the precious tidbits I keep finding. Here are her comments on that transition we find in the psalms from weeping to praise, that encouragement to look straight up and praise God with a song (when we least feel like …
Remembering
From Benedict XVI’s reflection on Psalm 136: [W]e can say: The liberation from Egypt, the time in the desert, the entrance into the Promised Land and then the other problems are very distant from us; they are not part of our history. But we must be attentive to the fundamental structure of this prayer [of …
“I will bless you, even if the car won’t start . . .”
A week ago I gave a talk at Witnesses to Hope, and part of what I spoke about was the importance of thanking the Lord in all circumstances. This past weekend one of the women who had attended that night, passed on to me a prayer that she found in the September issue of The …
Building up a memory for the good
As I have mentioned before, Pope Benedict is doing a marvelous series on the psalms during his Wednesday audiences. Here is part of his address yesterday on Psalm 126: Dear brothers and sisters, in our prayer we should look more often at how, in the events of our own lives, the Lord has protected, guided …
How many are my foes!
How many of you are saying (shouting) that phrase right now in your lives? “How many are my foes!” Well, you are in good company. David began Psalm 3 with those very words. Three times he uses the word “many” in reference to those who were attacking him . . . I think I mentioned …
