'For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.' i mean, that's quite an intro already, right? and possibly carries a profoundly deep message in terms of really getting our minds around the fact that David, altho he had messed up horribly, still ends up at the feet of God, rather than simply trying to hide or run the other way... [...]
'Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down on me. Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.' [vs. 1-4] Um, wait, what? This must be one of those other psalms, right, [...]
and i move on to psalm 26, and another psalm of david clearly set before the little bathsheba incident [2 samuel 11] where he starts by proclaiming how good and righteous he has been and inviting God to 'examine my heart and my mind' [vs. 2] which is a great practice to take from this psalm [altho maybe without the assumption of being clean and pure and righteous, unless it's been a good week for [...]
i know it's early days, but already this is proving to be an exciting exercise for me and one of the benefits of working through the psalms is discovering 'new' ones... i am not saying someone has been sneaking into my bible and adding in new psalms when i haven't been looking but often when we read the bible we stick to the passages we know well and like and avoid the harder ones or [...]
and on to Psalm 5: this is an interesting one. powerful line in verse 5 - 'You hate all who do wrong.' is that true? of course it is. it is true to where david is at the moment of writing and what he is feeling [and maybe secretly wanting] but is it Truth? absolutely not. we know from reading the rest of scripture that God does not hate anyone - His desire is that [...]