Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 63: Thirst as a Form of Worship
David writes this in the actual wilderness — not the metaphorical kind we like to use in sermons, but the kind with sand in your sandals and no water for miles. And the first thing he does, parched, is praise. "My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." Notice the daring: he does not pray for water. He turns his thirst itself into the prayer. And then comes the astonishing reversal: "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." The man with no food describes himself as feasting. This is not denial; it is the very opposite — it is the discovery that there is a hunger which, when honestly named, is already its own kind of feeding. The wilderness has not stopped him from worshipping. The wilderness has clarified what he was thirsty for all along.
00:00 O God, Thou Art My God
00:15 In a Dry and Thirsty Land
00:30 Thy Lovingkindness Better Than Life
00:45 Marrow and Fatness
01:00 Meditation in the Night Watches
01:15 The Shadow of Thy Wings
01:30 My Soul Followeth Hard After Thee

Psalm 62: Only
The word that runs like a stubborn thread through this psalm is the small, sturdy word only. "He only is my rock and my salvation." "My soul, wait thou only upon God." It is a word that does the same work in the soul as a pruning knife does in a vineyard — cutting away every other place we had been thinking of leaning. David has watched men, including powerful ones, and concluded with a kind of weary clarity that they are a tottering fence, a bowing wall. Even when weighed against vanity itself, they come up lighter. And then comes one of the strangest sentences in the whole Psalter: "God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God." It is as though God spoke softly, just once, and David spent the rest of his life turning the sentence over in his hands until he could hear it twice. Some words you only need to hear once. You spend the rest of your life listening to them.
00:00 Truly My Soul Waiteth
00:20 A Bowing Wall, A Tottering Fence
00:40 They Bless With Their Mouth
01:00 He Only Is My Rock
01:20 Trust in Him at All Times
01:40 Men of High Degree Are a Lie
02:00 God Hath Spoken Once

Psalm 61: The Rock That Is Higher Than I
There is a particular kind of prayer that begins not in the temple but at the edge of the map. "From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed." David has run out of geography. He has run out of strategies. And the petition that follows is one of the strangest and truest in all the Psalter: "lead me to the rock that is higher than I." Notice he does not ask for a different rock, or a stronger rock, or a more comfortable rock. He asks for higher ground than his own — ground he could not climb to alone. It is the prayer of a man who has finally understood that what he needs is not improvement but elevation. And then, with the candor of someone who has been answered before, he names what God has been all along: shelter, strong tower, the covert of wings. The end of the earth, it turns out, is not the end of God.
00:00 Hear My Cry, O God
00:15 From the End of the Earth
00:30 The Rock That Is Higher
00:45 The Covert of Thy Wings
01:00 The Heritage of Those That Fear
01:15 So Will I Sing Forever

Psalm 60: When the Ground Shakes
This is a psalm for after the battle has gone badly. The armies have returned, some of them without half their number, and David writes not to complain but to plead. "Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh." It is one of the few psalms where the ground itself becomes a character — an old, cracked thing needing repair. And then, halfway through, the tone shifts. God speaks. And when he speaks, he does not soothe; he claims. Shechem. Succoth. Gilead. Manasseh. Ephraim. Judah. Moab. Edom. He counts the territories like a man listing his tools. The defeat, we begin to see, has not canceled the covenant. And David lands where every honest soldier eventually lands: "Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man." The ground shakes. The enemies advance. And still — and here is the astonishment — "through God we shall do valiantly."
00:00 Thou Hast Cast Us Off
00:20 The Earth Made to Tremble
00:40 The Wine of Astonishment
01:00 A Banner for Those Who Fear Thee
01:20 Shechem and Succoth, Gilead and Judah
01:40 Moab Is My Washpot
02:00 Through God We Shall Do Valiantly

Psalm 59: The Dogs at Evening
They are outside the house. Saul's men. And David, trapped inside, gives them the most precise and devastating description in the Psalter: "they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city." He says it once, and then — astonishing — he says it again at the end. Twice he calls them dogs. Twice he notes the aimless circling, the empty barking, the hunger that never quite becomes a meal. It is the literary equivalent of drawing your enemy in miniature until he is no longer frightening. And then the morning comes. "But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning." The dogs howl at evening; the songbird answers at dawn. One gets the distinct impression that David had decided, somewhere in the night, which of those sounds carries further.
00:00 Deliver Me From Mine Enemies
00:20 They Lie in Wait, Not For My Sin
00:40 Awake to Help Me
01:00 A Noise Like a Dog
01:20 The Lord Shall Laugh
01:40 God Is My Defense
02:00 At Evening Let Them Return
02:20 But I Will Sing in the Morning