Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

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

Psalm 150: The Last Word Is Praise
And so the Psalter ends as it must — not with a question, not with a plea, not even with a lesson, but with sheer, unembarrassed, full-throated praise. Every instrument the psalmist can think of is summoned: trumpet, psaltery, harp, timbrel, strings, organs, cymbals loud and louder still. It is as if the poet, having journeyed through every shade of human experience — the laments, the doubts, the desperate midnight prayers, the songs of deliverance — arrives at last at the only destination that makes sense of it all. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts and according to his excellent greatness. The repetition is not laziness; it is the only honest response to a reality that outstrips our capacity to describe it. And then comes the final line, the one toward which all one hundred and fifty psalms have been traveling: "Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord." Not every thing that understands, or every thing that deserves to, but every thing that breathes. Your next breath is itself an invitation. Praise ye the Lord.
00:00 Praise in His Sanctuary and Firmament
00:15 The Full Orchestra of Worship
00:30 Every Breath, the Final Hallelujah

Psalm 149: The New Song and the Two-Edged Sword
This is the psalm that makes comfortable readers uncomfortable, and it should. It begins in pure delight — sing a new song, praise his name in the dance, take up the timbrel and harp — and then, without so much as a breath, puts a two-edged sword in the hands of the saints. The high praises of God in their mouth and a blade in their hand. We want these to be metaphors, and perhaps they are, but the psalmist does not seem to think the combination strange. He sees no contradiction between joy and justice, between dancing and the binding of kings with chains. The key, I think, is in that small phrase tucked into the middle: "For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation." Beautify the meek. Not arm the powerful, not reward the ambitious, but adorn the lowly with rescue. The sword is not given to the proud but to the meek — and that changes everything about what kind of weapon it is. This is the honour given to all his saints, says the psalmist, and one suspects it is an honour most of us are not yet ready to receive.
00:00 A New Song in the Congregation
01:00 The Honour of the Saints