Psalm 13- How Long?

Psalm 13

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

¹ How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?

³ Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
⁶ I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

I have always felt a connection with David that I believe many people can understand and have themselves. He was a normal boy, chosen by God and meant for something great. I hope your with me so far because that’s true of everyone of us. Beyond that however, I also find a deep connection with him in the psalms. They are prayers lifted up to God. Often, they are oriented around similar themes and some even have repeated phrases. This makes them even more real as prayers to me though. I find, so often that I lift up basically the same prayers over and over again. David and I sometimes find ourselves back in the same places that God just got us out of. We find ourselves despairing, festering in self-pity, and then the Lord, through our prayer helps us pick ourselves back up again.

This summer and the last few weeks of school has been a time the likes of which you find so often at the beginning of David’s psalms. I’ve been in a bit of a spiritual valley. My prayer life has dissipated, and when I do spend time with God, I usually feel like no one is listening. The hope that infected my soul at the beginning of the school year has grown weak, and the passionate love has turned into something that feels like obligation. The past few months I’ve just felt stuck, and I don’t really know why. This psalm stuck out to me more than any other psalm so far in this project because these words are virtually the words of my prayers the past few months. “How long? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts…?” The psalms are amazing in this way because God is able to call out to me, to move my heart in the same way that he moved David thousands of years ago.

This psalm is also great because it doesn’t come to rest in the despair and sadness but rather is transformed my the faith and trust of David which was renewed by God. “I will sing the Lord’s praise for he has been good to me.” And he has. I know that God has poured out grace in my life that I can’t even understand. I know that He fulfills His promises. I know that in times where I have leaned on Him with all that I am and trusted Him with my full heart, He has never let me down, and it was in those times that I felt most alive. I think that it will just take some time for the Lord to work in my heart and bring me back to the hope that He promised me. I ask you guys to pray for me and also for everyone who is experiencing a time of spiritual darkness that I and they will return to His Light. Much love -Lauren.

Psalm 12- Lying Lips

We are indeed a record ways behind and I’m sorry… again.

Psalm 12 nearly killed me. I have been reading this psalm over and over again since the last post which was A LONG TIME AGO!  I don’t know why I was so stuck on this one, but every time I came back to it, my brain just switched off and a dull buzzing filled my ears. I’ve written it out, read it forwards and backwards, verse by verse. I wish I could say that I finally had some great revelation which eventually transformed my faith life, but I have nothing of the sort to report. Basically, I received again the message of a manipulative and deceitful world, a message that still is important to hear. For this project, I focused on the image of the boastful tongue. The world is jam packed full of people who are ready to show off their accomplishments, to give their own two-cents, to let others know exactly how their lives are supremely important at every opportunity. Our country talks to much and doesn’t utilize their other senses enough. And I’ll just say that I am awful about this. So often, I will find myself piping in advice from “my own personal experiences”. Yes, there is a time and place to share you life experiences and the lessons you’ve learned living, but in most cases, for me at least, the advice comes before really listening to the other person. I’ve found that some of the best conversations I’ve had are the ones where I didn’t talk much, or at least didn’t talk much about myself.

With these thoughts, I did a painting with much help from my little sister, Delaney. Its a bit abstract, which was unfamiliar ground for both of us, especially Delaney, and it is basically a bunch of people without eyes or ears. I love blue and orange together, so I especially enjoyed the color scheme. It was also great to work on the project with my sister. I’d never done a painting with someone else before, and it was great to see the way our ideas melded together. So without further ado…

Also, sorry the photo is awful. I couldn’t get the lighting right at all.

UPDATE

Hey everyone…

Yes, we’re apologizing again. It’s true, we’re busy college kids. And we’re terrible.

There will be a post from each of us for each week, but we’re going to try to keep things organized and in order, so be on the lookout for new posts that slip in past weeks.

That means: scroll down and look for something you might’ve missed before!

Week 11 – God’s Face

Psalm 11

 ¹ In the LORD I take refuge.
How then can you say to me:
“Flee like a bird to your mountain.
² For look, the wicked bend their bows;
they set their arrows against the strings
to shoot from the shadows
at the upright in heart.
³ When the foundations are being destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”

 ⁴ The LORD is in his holy temple;
the LORD is on his heavenly throne.
He observes everyone on earth;
his eyes examine them.
⁵ The LORD examines the righteous,
but the wicked, those who love violence,
he hates with a passion.
⁶ On the wicked he will rain
fiery coals and burning sulfur;
a scorching wind will be their lot.

 ⁷ For the LORD is righteous,
he loves justice;
the upright will see his face.

Lately the psalms have been about the magnificent power of God and the punishment of those who deny Him. This is of course true and we need to remember who God is and how great is his power, but I am taking a slightly different angle with this psalm. Most of the psalm was in the same attitude I was describing, but the last lines changed the game. It was a “wow” line for me when it says, “ For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice; the upright will see his face.” The upright will see his face. For the past several psalms, David has spent a lot of time discussing the fate of the wicked, but now it’s time for those who love Him. What is their fate? The upright will see his face. Imagine a face so lovely that just seeing it would be reward beyond anything you could ever ask. I guess you can’t. That’s kind of the point. The God we serve is more beautiful than anything we could ever conceive in our heads. Are you not excited to see Him?! This psalm fills me with so much hope.

For this week, I decided to try something a little new. I wrote a prose poem. I had only ever written one before, and that was for fun last week. I had never really liked the idea of them before, but I read one that was actually good a little while ago and my perception was changed a bit. Thus, I decided to try it out. I felt like the style of wandering progressive thought worked well for my topic, which is basically the little beautiful things of the everyday and signposts pointing to the loveliness of God which we will one day be able to know. It was an interesting project, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the medium of prose poems. At least I gave it a shot, right?

A PROSE POEM

When I was sipping coffee out of a mug that

made my fingers hot but didn’t quite burn ,

I looked out the window and thought about

how beautiful it was. The window, the sky beyond,

the mug in my hands and the way a warm drink

can slip down my throat and make my chest warm, right

up next to my heart, and the people who whispered

so they wouldn’t disturb and the people who

didn’t whisper so they could hear every word.

Beyond, on the sidewalk, the tree branches

dipped down so I could see their lovely baby buds. The

homeless man walked by and looked up and saw the

little earthly jewels too. And it was beautiful. And I thought that

beyond there was something that defined

beautiful. It was far away, but closer perhaps than

the man or the tree or the window or the

whisperers or the laughers. Something that

takes breath away and gives life.

Week 10 – A Tiff With Dumb Philosophers

This psalm called for something a little more experience based rather than creative for me. I am in an introductory philosophy class this semester. I haven’t, unfortunately, liked it that much because it isn’t as involved or discussion based as I had hoped it would be. Also, a lot of philosophers are just dumb. I have found throughout the course of the class that many of the people we have studied all their lives, frittering away their souls, concerned with the complexities of a logic that was too big for them to understand, all the while distancing themselves from the essential heart of their being. As they tried to spin their complex theories, they just became more and more lost. This all is not to rag on philosophy, though. I think that it is a really interesting and worthwhile field of study. I owe much of the solidity of my faith to the philosophy and reason of C.S. Lewis. What I am trying to say, though, is that as people dive further into abstraction and intellectual thought, there is more room to err wide of the mark. God is truth. No matter what. We do not have his omniscience. Sometimes, people can spin their lies in ways that sound convincing, but no matter what anyone says, God will still reign.

Recently in our class, we’ve been discussing that very question, of God’s existence. First off, my professor is a Christian and the arrangement of his lectures has reflected that a little. We have cycled through arguments and responses in the unit so far, and every time we have begun with an atheistic argument and then followed with a theistic response. Brett has done a good job at least building a foundation for solid theistic discussion. I have been particularly struck by the atheistic philosophers though. The line in Psalm 10 reflects the attitude I have received from them so far, “In their insolence the wicked boast: ‘God doesn’t care, doesn’t even exist.’” The  men we have discussed do not seem to have any conception of omniscience. They seem to think that just because they cannot fully understand why things happen like they do in the world, then there must be no reason. They are so caught up in their own intelligence that they don’t even think about what the God that they deny even entails. They measure His omniscience against their own knowledge, they measure His power against what they can do, and they measure His love against the happy feelings they have for the people close to them. They don’t even realize what it really means for God, as He truly is, to exist. They think that because God doesn’t do things the way they would that He doesn’t care. They think because God doesn’t fit into the tiny box of their own conceptions that He doesn’t exist.

Well I say that they are wrong.

Week 9 – The Lord Reigns Forever

Psalm 9

¹ I will praise you, O LORD, with all my heart;
I will tell of all your wonders.
² I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

 ³ My enemies turn back;
they stumble and perish before you.
⁴ For you have upheld my right and my cause;
you have sat on your throne, judging righteously.
⁵ You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked;
you have blotted out their name for ever and ever.
⁶ Endless ruin has overtaken the enemy,
you have uprooted their cities;
even the memory of them has perished.

 ⁷ The LORD reigns forever;
he has established his throne for judgment.
⁸ He will judge the world in righteousness;
he will govern the peoples with justice.
⁹ The LORD is a refuge for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
¹⁰ Those who know your name will trust in you,
for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.

 ¹¹ Sing praises to the LORD, enthroned in Zion;
proclaim among the nations what he has done.
¹² For he who avenges blood remembers;
he does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.

 ¹³ O LORD, see how my enemies persecute me!
Have mercy and lift me up from the gates of death,
¹⁴ that I may declare your praises
in the gates of the Daughter of Zion
and there rejoice in your salvation.
¹⁵ The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug;
their feet are caught in the net they have hidden.
¹⁶ The LORD is known by his justice;
the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.
                Selah

¹⁷ The wicked return to the grave,
all the nations that forget God.
¹⁸ But the needy will not always be forgotten,
nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish.

 ¹⁹ Arise, O LORD, let not man triumph;
let the nations be judged in your presence.
²⁰ Strike them with terror, O LORD;
let the nations know they are but men.
Selah

I’m ahead! Only a day, I suppose, but considering the pace we’ve been keeping lately, I’m feeling a little good about myself.

This psalm, like many of the psalms, speaks to God’s infinite power. Over and over again we hear of His mightiness, but I think we would do well to hear it even more. I know that I fail to give God the respect, the awe, that He so definitely deserves. Being reminded of my own tininess next to God’s greatness only makes me love Him more. He tells us that He would die just for us, and sometimes the absurdity and the amazingness of that is lost on us because we make God smaller than He is in our minds.

I struggle with this a lot, with my perception of God. Lately, I have been trying to discover what it really means to be in love with this God of ours who is so . . . huge. I have been reading a book called Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller, and I have been moved by his witness in faith. He emphasizes this passion, which I know from my past, but I feel like I have been missing a bit recently. The fervor which he writes about filled my with longing to be with God in heaven. I wanted to do something kind of . . . crazy for this week. I was looking at pictures of the Grand Canyon online because I haven’t ever seen it in person and because God’s glory is so beautifully revealed in His creation. I decided I wanted to do art this week. I wanted to create the feeling of the Grand Canyon on paper. I kind of have no money to buy art supplies right now, so I got a little creative. I had some charcoal still, as well as a couple graphite sticks. I also found a tube of blue watercolor and some hot pink nail polish and I just went to work. It was a ton of fun, and doesn’t really look at all like the Grand Canyon. It was so great to just create, though. I was filled with inspiration from what God has been telling and showing me lately, and I poured my heart out in a kind of visual prayer.It was pretty weird but wonderful as well.

Week 9 – This Hope

As I went through this psalm, I took notes, writing down some of the lines that stuck out to me the most.

“I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart“
“I will tell of your wonders”
“You have upheld my cause“
“Refuge for the oppressed, stronghold in times of trouble”
“Those who know Your name will trust in You”
“Needy”
“Afflicted”
“Hope“

I stared at these lines for a while, gathering them up in my head and letting them simmer. This psalm is about the praise God deserves, how we can’t help but declare, tell… but also about God’s justice, and that being something we should praise Him for specifically. I was struck recently by a message I heard; the pastor was talking about America, and how we tend to focus solely on God’s compassion, whereas in other parts of the world, His children cling to Him, calling out to Him for justice in the face of so much oppression. I sometimes neglect that facet of God–that He is powerful, strong, noble, and just, and He doesn’t take crap from anybody. He is the King, our Savior and Deliverer.

This song kind of focuses on that.

“This Hope”

There are no words to say
But I will not be quiet
There’s so much wrong and pain
But I know You will triumph

CHORUS 1:
Because I hope in You and I lift my cry
To You, God, oh most high
My praise, my heart is for You
The Lord is right, the Lord is just
In You I place my trust
And my praise, my heart is for You

The world forgets You, Lord,
When all should bow and tremble
The declaration sounds
Within this holy temple

CHORUS 2:
Because we hope in You and we lift our cry
To You, God, oh most high
Our praise, our hearts are for You
The Lord is right, the Lord is just
In You we place our trust
And our praise, our hearts are for You

BRIDGE:
Those who know this hope cannot be quiet
Those who know this hope cannot be silent

Week 8 – The Sound

Psalm 8

 ¹ LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

   You have set your glory
in the heavens.
² Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
³ When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
⁴ what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

 ⁵ You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
⁸ the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

 ⁹ LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

I’ve heard this psalm worked into song a great deal. Surprisingly, every time I tried to approach the vocabulary used, nothing was working for me. So, instead, I took the feeling I got from the psalm… simple praise, the desire to make His name known throughout creation… and used that to write the lyrics.

It’s certainly not polished, but I’m working on it.

“The Sound”

In the way You paint the night sky
In how a life is formed
In the way Your music fills me
In how the veil was torn

CHORUS:
I cannot help but praise You
I cannot stop the sound
And the noise is deafening
Your beauty overwhelming
And our hearts are aching
To sing Your name with all we are

Through the eyes of those who seek You
Through the words of children’s songs
Through the heavens shining brightly
Your majesty is known

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
Can you hear the drum beat?
Our voices sing
To the One and Only
Our everything

Week 8 – Crowned with Glory and Honor

This psalm speaks something which I think is very important to hear, but must be heard with discerning ears. In this psalm, David speaks of the dignity of humanity. He says, “You have crowned them with glory and honor.” God made us to be . . . amazing. We forget very easily sometimes what Genesis tells us, that we are created in God’s own image. Yes, we have been corrupted by sin, and yes, we are not what we were made to be (yet), but we bear God’s image. We are meant to be signs, pointing to the glory of God. God built us with bits and pieces of His own glory and honor so that in our dignity, He also is dignified. Don’t get me wrong, we are not God. This is the precaution I was talking about. Often, rather than embracing God-given human dignity, people strive for the glory of God himself. That’s . . . just a no-no.

Anyways, this week, I decided to explore the concept of human dignity a little bit by doing some quick sketches of strangers that I saw. I just had fun with a pen and a little lined notebook, basically. I found that people tend to become more beautiful the closer you look at them. God created us all with our own perfect peculiarities, and I had a lot of fun observing some of the little details of people I didn’t know. The funny looks I got also added to the fun of this project. So here are a few of the sketches:

Week 7 – A Fable

Again, we are way behind schedule. Again, we are sorry.

On the very first week of the Psalm Project, I was stuck. I gave my excuses and everything, and put it in my past. There was one comment, though, which I bears some relevance to my project for this psalm. I was talking about writing a short story, and how I didn’t want it to turn into a fable. I never had much patience with fables for some reason. However, the more I’ve thought about them, I have found that they bear remarkable resemblance to the types of stories Jesus would use to teach his people. Then, in a creative writing workshop that I’m in this semester, we read a fable by Kevin Brockheimer, and my notion of fables continued to change.

So, I’m trying my hand at something new: the medium of fable. I was inspired by the lines in this psalm which, in my translation say, “They open a hole and dig it deep but fall into the pit they have dug. Their mischief comes back upon themselves; their violence falls on their own heads.” These lines provided a very powerful idea and image with which to work. I am still not exactly satisfied with my result, but it was a very interesting and moving experience to try something new. I hope you enjoy.

A Fable Ending in the Sound of a Thousand Shattered Bottles

Once there was a forest that was vast and thick and green. It was filled with many assorted and lovely creatures. The most beautiful of these were the foxes. Their fur was red like the sun just before it dips beneath the horizon. They walked with grace. Many of the older and wiser creatures of the wood remarked that the foxes bore great resemblance to the Wolf which had not been seen there for many years.

Now there was an owl who also lived in the forest. He had a great deal of cunning but lacked true wisdom. He had a habit of taking post on overhanging branches and watching the world below. The owl saw much. He scoffed when the foxes were praised for their grace, confined as they were to the ground. He was, he thought, the worthiest creature for admiration.

One day, he concocted a plan. Under a large tree in the middle of the woods, the owl made the mole dig him a deep hole. The mole obeyed the owl because he, and all the other creatures, feared him. When the hole was dug, the owl covered it with branches and leaves.

When his work was complete, the owl hid in the canopy above. Soon a young fox came onto the path. She sung and looked with innocent eyes at the world around her. He held its breath as the fox neared the pit. Sure enough, his plan worked. She tumbled into the trap. The owl let out a whoo of excitement and flew down from the tree. The owl cut off the fox’s tail and released her, crying and ashamed, from the pit. The owl whoo-ed again from delight before re-covering the hole with brush and returning to his branch. Before he had waited long, another fox came and fell into the trap. Again, the owl took the fox’s tail and released him. Before the day was up, he had collected many beautiful fox tails.

That night, he placed the tails in separate clear bottles and lined them up in the cave where many creatures would see them. The next day, he returned to the trap and took the tails of many more foxes. Meanwhile, the creatures began to notice the tails of the foxes in the cave. They turned to one another and said, “What could this be?” Many foxes hurried to the cave to see the spectacle as well, but were caught in the owl’s trap. The owl stole the tails of even more foxes on the second day and was pleased with his great cunning.

On the second night, the owl brought newly filled bottles to the cave and all the creatures gathered there were astounded. He told them that he had indeed taken the foxes’ tails, and that he had done so as a favor to the foxes. Tail-less, he said, was the new, better and more sophisticated way to live, and he showed them his own, barely-existent tail. In fact, the owl was jealous of the beautiful foxes’ tails. All the creatures believed him, though, because they could not match his cunning and were afraid.

As the days passed, more and more bottles filled the cave. The shamed foxes began to believe the owl. They came out of their hiding place and said that, yes, it was better to be without a tail. The other creatures thought that the foxes were less graceful and perhaps less lovely without their tails, but since the foxes had said so, it must be true. Soon, all the creatures began to cut off their tails. The cave was soon filled with bottles containing the fiery fox tails, but also bushy brown squirrel tails, fluffy white rabbit tails, the delicate curved tails of deer, wide, flat beaver tails and many more.

Before long, there was not a tail in the forest, besides, if it could be considered, the owl’s own small feathered one. The owl loved to look down at all the creatures. He had convinced all of them that their right and good way was wrong. The owl was proud of his influence. He would look at the bottles and whoo in pleasure.

He decided, at some time or another, to fashion a tail of his own. He made it large and complex and lovely. When he appeared before all the creatures, they looked in awe upon the tail that he had made. It was so big and full that he could no longer fly. He didn’t mind, though. He liked to walk among the creatures and see their fear and admiration.

Life in the forest carried on in this way for some time. One day, the owl was strutting through the trees. He had forgotten the days of his past when he had only observed. He had forgotten the days when jealousy had filled him. He had forgotten, even, the trap he had lain. When he walked upon the brush-covered pit, the tail, the artifice, was too heavy and he fell. Angered, in the deep hole, he tried to remove the tail, but he had secured it too tightly. He could not fly out. He wailed, crying whoo, but all that heard were too afraid to pull him out.

The day ended, and he remained, cold and alone, in the darkness. Finally, when the moon was high in the sky and the pit was full of light, a creature looked down upon the owl. Before the owl could speak, a low growl rumbled off the dirt walls. A flood of fear filled the owl and he looked up at the Wolf. The owl was deeply ashamed and strained away from the Wolf’s paw which pulled him out. The Wolf took the owl’s fake tail between his teeth and ripped it from the owl who whoo-ed in pain. Within an instant, the fake tail was shards at the feet of the Wolf. The owl was commanded to follow as the Wolf strode like the wind through the forest. The owl looked small and timid and fragile as he waddled behind. The Wolf led them to the cave, and the owl trembled in terrified awe. He looked up at the bottles lining the walls. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands. The moonlight reflected off of them, and they were like tears seeping from the earth. There was a moment where both the Wolf and the owl were still, and then, the Wolf yelled or cried or sung something incomprehensible to the owl, and, with one great swipe of his tail, the Wolf knocked all of the bottles from their place. The owl’s ears, which were so keen, were deafened by the sound of a thousand shattering bottles.