by James Webb
Words have power. Words do things. When a marriage takes place, there are certain words that need to be said. “I now pronounce you man and wife” is just words, but these words change people. They bring about an actual change.
The thing about reading the Psalms is that occasionally, at just the right time, there will be a sliver of poetry that speaks directly to your heart. Here are some crumbs from the table that have fed my soul in the past, and continue to do so, along with commentary on what they mean to me.
I’ve been reading a book called ‘Deeper Places: The Spirituality of the Psalms’ by Matthew Jacoby, and I was struck by something that I read today. He suggests that the most common experience conveyed by the Psalms is the experience of waiting for God to show up.
Sometimes, I find it hard to remain totally committed to hope when a cursory look around provides plenty of reasons to despair. Thankfully, I am totally committed to hope. When I wrote Look on the Bright Side (which appears in The Listening Book) I was trying to nail my colours to the mast, the reasoning being that if I publicly put my beliefs on paper then I can’t really give up without looking like a hypocrite. That’s one way to make pride work for you. Read more
There was this one time when I was asked to visit a friend of mine who was in hospital. Let me clarify what I mean by ‘in hospital’. He was actually in the hospital’s locked ward. He’d had a psychotic episode and been sectioned. So I went to visit him, and I sat with him in the secure unit. I was out of my depth, which is where I spend a lot of my time. He asked me to read to him, from the Psalms. So that’s what I did. That’s all I did. For half an hour I just sat and read from the Psalms while he wept beside me. Then I went home to my family. Read more
It’s been said that the Bible is a record of God speaking to Man, but the Psalms are a record of Man speaking to God. This, I think, is one of the reasons why they have a universal appeal. Psalm 23 is the Amazing Grace of the Bible; it’s the one that everyone knows. The power of the Psalms is that they put into words the inner music of the human soul. Whatever is going on in you, there’s a Psalm that you can read and say, “Me too!” Read more
