Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 72: Rain Upon the Mown Grass
Of all the images Scripture gives us of the good king, this one is perhaps the most startling: "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass." Not rain upon a garden in its glory, but upon grass that has been cut — shorn, diminished, lying flat and spent. This is where the true king arrives: not at the feast but at the aftermath. The psalm builds an empire of justice outward from this single tenderness — sea to sea, river to the ends of the earth — but it never loses its center. The king who rules all nations is the same king who delivers the needy when he cries and spares the poor who has no helper. "Precious shall their blood be in his sight." One suspects the psalmist could see, even if only in outline, that the throne of heaven would one day look less like a palace and more like a cross. The final line — "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended" — closes like a great door. But the kingdom it described has no such ending.
00:00 Give the King Thy Judgments
01:00 Dominion from Sea to Sea
02:00 His Name Shall Endure Forever

Psalm 71: The Lifelong Refuge
Here is a prayer written, as it were, in the handwriting of an old man — and what a thing it is to watch. The psalmist has known God since the womb, has been held up by Him from birth, and now, with grey hairs and failing strength, makes one request above all others: do not cast me off in old age. It is not the plea of a man who has forgotten God but of one who has known Him so long that the thought of being without Him is simply unbearable. His enemies whisper that God has abandoned him, and the cruelty of the accusation is that it strikes at the one thing he cannot prove to them — that God is still there. But notice what he does with his fear. He does not collapse into it; he turns it into a vocation. "Until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come." The old man wants more time not for comfort but for testimony. He has, it seems, one more song to sing — and he intends to sing it on the psaltery, the harp, and with whatever breath he has left.
00:00 In Thee Do I Put My Trust
01:00 Cast Me Not Off in Old Age
02:00 Declaring His Wondrous Works
03:00 A Song That Will Not Stop

Psalm 70: Make Haste
This psalm is barely five verses long, and every one of them is running. "Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord." There is no preamble, no scene-setting, no theological reflection before the cry. David does not explain his situation or build a case. He simply needs God, and he needs Him now. The repetition — "make haste," "make haste," "make no tarrying" — is not literary flourish; it is the language of genuine emergency, the way one calls for help when the building is on fire. And yet, pressed between the cries for deliverance, there is a single, luminous line: "Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified." Even in his desperation, David can see past himself to the community of seekers, the larger company of those who love what God does. It is a remarkable act of spiritual peripheral vision. He ends where he began — poor, needy, urgent — but now with this confession on his lips: "Thou art my help and my deliverer." The one who makes haste to ask has already found what he is looking for.
00:00 Haste, O God, to Deliver Me
01:00 Thou Art My Help and My Deliverer

Psalm 69: The Waters Have Come In
"Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul." There is no gradual descent in this psalm — David is already drowning when the first line begins. Deep mire, no standing, floods overflowing, throat dried from crying, eyes failing. This is not a man asking for help before the storm; this is a man going under. And what makes it worse is the loneliness: "I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none." Instead they gave him gall for his meat and vinegar for his thirst — details that would echo centuries later on a hill outside Jerusalem. Yet the psalm does not end in the water. It ends with a song. "I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving." How does a drowning man sing? Perhaps only a drowning man can sing this particular song — the one that rises not from comfort but from the absolute bottom, where the only direction left is up. "The Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners." If you have ever felt the waters closing over you, this psalm was written in your language.
00:00 The Waters Are Come In
01:00 For Thy Sake I Have Borne Reproach
02:00 Let Me Not Sink
03:00 Reproach Hath Broken My Heart
04:00 I Will Praise the Name of God

Psalm 68: The God Who Rides the Heavens and Tends the Orphan
"Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered." So begins the most thunderous processional in the Psalter — a psalm that marches, shakes the earth, drops the heavens, and scatters kings like snowflakes on Mount Salmon. And yet, tucked into the opening verses, almost between the lines of this cosmic war anthem, is a portrait of God so tender it nearly stops you: "A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. God setteth the solitary in families." The same God whose chariots number twenty thousand, who rides upon the heavens of heavens and sends out His voice in thunder — this God notices the lonely person and places them in a home. That is the paradox at the heart of this psalm, and perhaps at the heart of all theology worth having: the more powerful the God, the more astonishing His gentleness. He who leads captivity captive also receives gifts for the rebellious, "that the Lord God might dwell among them." He does not scatter His enemies in order to be left alone in His glory. He scatters them so that He might dwell — with us.
00:00 Let God Arise
01:00 A Father of the Fatherless
02:00 The Hill God Chose
03:00 The God of Salvation
04:00 Sing Unto God, Ye Kingdoms