Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 7: The Pit the Digger Falls Into
David makes here a breathtaking wager. If he is guilty — if there is iniquity in his hands, if he has repaid evil to the man who was at peace with him — then let the enemy take his life and lay his honour in the dust. It is the prayer of a man who knows he is being watched by the only eyes that matter, and who would rather be destroyed than be dishonest about himself before that gaze. But then the psalm turns outward, and we see one of Scripture's most vivid images of self-defeating evil: the man who digs a pit and falls into it, who conceives mischief and brings forth falsehood, whose violence comes down on his own head. There is something almost comic about it — a kind of moral slapstick — as though wickedness, for all its menace, cannot finally build anything that holds. It is, in the end, a terrible architect. And over against all this frantic digging and plotting and scheming, the psalmist simply sings praise to the name of the Lord Most High. The contrast is everything.
00:00 In Thee Do I Put My Trust
00:30 If There Be Iniquity in My Hands
01:00 The Righteous God Trieth the Hearts
01:30 The Pit He Made for Others
01:50 Praise to the Lord Most High

Psalm 6: The Bed That Swam with Tears
Here is a man who has run out of everything — strength, patience, even the ability to see clearly, for his eye is "consumed because of grief." He does not come to God with arguments or credentials. He comes with bones that are vexed, a soul that is sore vexed, and a question that is almost too raw to ask: "How long?" It is worth pausing over that question, because the psalmist does not finish it. How long until healing? How long until rescue? How long until the weeping stops? He leaves it open, as if the ache itself were eloquent enough. And then — without explanation, without any recorded answer from heaven — something shifts. "The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping." Not the words of my prayer, notice, but the voice of my weeping. As if tears had their own language, and God was fluent in it. The psalm that began in dread of rebuke ends with a strange, fierce confidence. Something has been heard that did not need to be spoken.
00:00 O Lord, Rebuke Me Not
00:20 My Bones Are Vexed
00:35 The Bed That Swam with Tears
00:50 The Lord Hath Heard My Weeping

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