Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 5: The Morning Voice
Notice where the psalmist begins his day. Not with a list, not with the news, not even with his troubles — though his troubles are considerable and he will get to them. He begins by directing his voice. "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up." There is something almost athletic about that verb — direct — as if prayer were an arrow that had to be aimed, and the aiming had to happen before the day's winds picked up. Most of us, left to ourselves, would wake up and drift; the psalmist wakes up and aims. And the target is worth noticing too: not merely heaven in general, but the house of God, entered in the multitude of his mercy. He is not pleading his own worthiness at the door. He is walking in on the strength of someone else's welcome. Perhaps this is what it means to be defended by joy — to have a mercy large enough to walk into before the sun is fully up.
00:00 Give Ear to My Words
00:18 In the Morning Will I Direct My Prayer
00:38 Into Thy House in the Multitude of Thy Mercy
00:58 Let All That Trust in Thee Rejoice

Psalm 4: The Gladness That Outlasts the Harvest
There is a moment in this psalm that slips by so quickly one can easily miss its strangeness. The world around the psalmist is groaning its old familiar complaint — "Who will shew us any good?" — that low, perpetual murmur of people who have decided happiness is a rumor. And the psalmist's answer is not to argue, not to defend God's goodness, not even to list his blessings. He simply says: "Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased." It is one of the quietest boasts in Scripture. He is not saying his barn is fuller than theirs; he is saying his gladness is of a different kind altogether — the kind that does not depend on the harvest. And then, as if to prove it, he lies down. "I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep." Safety, in the end, is not the absence of trouble but the presence of the One who makes you dwell. The corn and the wine come and go. The gladness stays.
00:00 Hear Me When I Call
00:18 Commune With Your Own Heart Upon Your Bed
00:35 Gladness More Than Corn and Wine
00:52 Lay Me Down in Peace

Psalm 3: Sleep as an Act of Faith
This is a psalm written while on the run — David, we are told, fleeing from his own son, surrounded by voices whispering that God has finally washed his hands of him. And in the middle of it, almost casually, comes one of the most astonishing sentences in all of Scripture: "I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me." Consider what that sentence contains. A man hunted by an army, betrayed by his own flesh and blood, with every earthly reason to lie awake all night sharpening his fears — and he slept. He slept because the Lord sustained him. Sleep, it turns out, is sometimes the highest form of worship; to close one's eyes in the middle of the storm is to confess, more eloquently than any hymn, that the keeping of the world is not on your shoulders. The ten thousands who set themselves round about are real, but they are not ultimate. The shield is already up. Lay you down.
00:00 Many Rise Up Against Me
00:15 Thou, O Lord, Art a Shield for Me
00:30 I Laid Me Down and Slept
00:48 Salvation Belongeth Unto the Lord

Psalm 2: The Laughter in Heaven
There is a sound in this psalm that we rarely let ourselves hear: the laughter of God. The nations rage, the kings take counsel, the rulers plot their small rebellions against a throne they can neither see nor reach — and the one who sitteth in the heavens laughs. Not a cruel laugh, I think, but the laugh of someone watching a child solemnly declare war on the ocean. The scene is almost comic, until you remember how much of human history has been spent on precisely this errand: breaking bands, casting away cords, arranging ourselves into councils against a love we have mistaken for tyranny. And then the psalm pivots, gently but without apology, and tells us what to do with the news that our rebellions are futile. Not despair. Not cynicism. "Kiss the Son." Come close to the very one you had resolved to fight. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in him" — the rebels, it turns out, were invited home all along.
00:00 Why Do the Heathen Rage
00:20 He That Sitteth in the Heavens Shall Laugh
00:40 Thou Art My Son
01:00 Kiss the Son, Put Your Trust in Him

Psalm 1: The Tree and the Chaff
The Psalter opens not with a prayer or a hymn but with a choice — and, more quietly, with a picture. Here is a man, the psalmist says, who has sunk his life down into the law of the Lord like a tree sinks its roots toward water, and the result is that when the drought comes (and the drought always comes) he does not even notice. His leaf does not wither. Over against him stands another figure, and the contrast is almost cruel in its lightness: chaff, which the wind driveth away. Not punished, not argued with — simply blown. This is the great sorting of the Psalms, offered before a single prayer has been prayed: you may be a tree or you may be chaff, and the difference is not a matter of effort or cleverness but of where you have chosen to put your roots. Meditation day and night, says the psalmist, as though the law were not a burden to carry but a river to drink from. The tree does not strain to bear fruit; it simply stands where the water is.
00:00 Blessed Is the Man
00:15 A Tree Planted by the Rivers
00:32 The Chaff the Wind Drives Away
00:48 The Way of the Righteous