Daily Psalms - Classical Psalms Every Day

Psalm 66: Come and See, Come and Hear
This psalm has a structure you could almost diagram — it moves in concentric circles, from the widest possible view to the most intimate. It begins with all ye lands making a joyful noise, and ends with one man, alone, telling what God has done for his soul. "Come and see," the psalmist calls at first, pointing to the Red Sea made dry, the flood crossed on foot, the nations held under God's unsleeping eye. But then, halfway through, the voice changes. "Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul." That shift is the whole point. Public miracles are wonderful, but they are not enough on their own — somebody must eventually tell you what God has done in the small room of a single life. The universe is evidence; a testimony is witness. Both are needed, and both are given here, and the psalm insists that we not despise either one.
00:00 Make a Joyful Noise
00:20 How Terrible in Thy Works
00:40 He Turned the Sea Into Dry Land
01:00 Tried as Silver Is Tried
01:20 Through Fire and Through Water
01:40 I Will Pay Thee My Vows
02:00 Come and Hear What He Hath Done
02:20 He Hath Not Turned Away My Prayer

Psalm 65: The Crown Upon the Year
This is one of the great agricultural psalms, and you cannot read it slowly without smelling damp earth. God, David tells us, visits the earth. He doesn't merely sustain it from a distance; he comes down with a watering can. He waters the ridges. He settles the furrows. He softens the soil with showers. The verbs are tender, almost domestic — the sort of attention a gardener gives, not the management of a corporation. And then comes the line that should be carved over every farmer's gate: "Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness." God walks through the seasons, and goodness leaks from his footprints. The little hills rejoice on every side. The valleys, covered in corn, shout for joy. If you have ever wondered whether creation itself worships, the psalm answers: it has been doing so all along. We are simply latecomers to a song the pastures have been singing for a long time.
00:00 Praise Waiteth for Thee in Sion
00:20 Iniquities Prevail Against Me
00:40 Blessed Is the Man Whom Thou Choosest
01:00 The Confidence of All the Ends of the Earth
01:20 Thou Stillest the Noise of the Seas
01:40 Thou Visitest the Earth
02:00 Thou Crownest the Year With Thy Goodness
02:20 The Little Hills Rejoice

Psalm 64: The Arrow That Returns
Words, David tells us, can be weapons — and not the obvious kind. He is not afraid of swords here; he is afraid of tongues whetted like swords, of bitter words shot from secret places by men who have made a craft of slander. There is a particular cruelty in arrows you cannot see coming, and the wicked of this psalm are connoisseurs of the unseen wound. They congratulate themselves: "Who shall see them?" And then, with the suddenness of a closing trap, the psalm pivots: "But God shall shoot at them with an arrow; suddenly shall they be wounded." The hidden archers are themselves seen. And the most terrible turn of all: "they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves." The weapon comes home. There is, it turns out, a Witness who watches the secret counsel — and a justice that does not need to invent new arrows when the old ones come back on their own.
00:00 Hear My Voice, O God
00:15 Tongues Whetted Like Swords
00:30 Arrows Shot in Secret
00:45 Who Shall See Them?
01:00 But God Shall Shoot
01:15 Their Own Tongue Returns
01:30 The Righteous Shall Be Glad

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