Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

• Deuteronomy 11:18

No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

• Deuteronomy 30:14

Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.

• Job 22:22

May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

• Psalm 19:14

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

• Psalm 119:11

“Therefore, wherever we no longer pray the Psalms in our churches, we must take up the Psalter that much more in our daily morning and evening prayers, reading and praying together at least several Psalms every day so that we succeed in reading through this book a number of times each year, getting into it deeper and deeper. We also ought not to select Psalms at our own discretion, thinking that we know better what we ought to pray than does God himself. To do that is to dishonor the prayer book of the Bible. In the ancient church it was not unusual to memorize ‘the entire David.’ In one of the eastern churches, this was a prerequisite for the pastoral office. The church father St. Jerome says that one heard the Psalms being sung in the fields and gardens in his time. The Psalter impregnated the life of early Christianity. Yet more important than all of this is the fact that Jesus died on the cross with the words of the Psalter on his lips.
“Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, psalms, The Prayer Book of the Bible

Dietrich Bonhoeffer again writes a very short chapter.  He talks about how important praying the psalms should be in church, but then he spends half the chapter talking about how taking the psalms with you throughout the week is even more important.

I suppose his point is that if the church takes an importance in including the psalms, singing the psalms, and praying the psalms in church, the congregation will take that activity more seriously.

As I mentioned last week, my niece sang two psalms at her father’s memorial services, Psalms 23 and 121.  Having lived a good portion of her adult life in Scotland, she sang the psalms in the churches that she attended.  Her father, while in the hospital, asked her to sing those two psalms to him.  He was soothed both by the tune and by the words.  We need not chant, but a word or two may need to be repeated to get the meter right.

But whether it is a worship song, a hymn, or a psalm, how often do you get something that was sung at church as an earworm later in the week?  It does not happen all the time with me, but if the words of the song touched my heart, that song has a better chance of being an earworm later on.

Really, whether I can remember the words or not, the final hymn is something that I often hum all the way home after a meaningful worship service – one that inspires me to further action.  Those Sundays, I can go without lunch and only a small bit of nourishment for supper.  I am so energized to follow through with my writing or research.

Other Sundays…  probably a nap, a long nap.

Lord, guide us as we pray.  You, Lord, are my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?  You, Lord, are the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1, adapted)  Inspire me to greater service.  If I need a nap, You will guide me in that direction also, but I must keep Your Word in my heart. In the name of Jesus, I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.