March 14, 2021
Psalm 28
To the tune of “O Sing a Song of Bethlehem” C.M. D Sing it at seedbed.com/soundtrack
1 To You I call, O Lord my Rock;
don’t turn Your ear from me,
For if You’re silent, then like those
within the pit I’ll be.
2 O, hear my cry for mercy, as
to You for help I call;
As I lift up my hands to the
Most Holy Place of all.
3 With wicked who much evil do,
do not drag me away;
Who speak peace with their friends, while hate
is in their hearts all day.
4 Repay them for their evil work,
for deeds their hands have done;
Bring back on them what they deserve,
the evil of each one.
5 Since they do not regard the Lord,
nor work His hands have done;
He’ll tear them down, and never build
back up a single one.
6 Praise to the Lord, for He has heard
my cry for grace from Him;
7 The Lord’s my strength and shield; I’m helped
as my heart trusts in Him.
My heart does leap for joy, and I
give thanks to Him in song;
8 The Lord’s His people’s strength, a for-
tress of salvation strong.
9 O save Your people, and do bless
Your own inheritance;
And be their shepherd, carry them—
forever their defense.
CONSIDER THIS
I live in my head most of the time. I am far more rational than I am emotional. In fact, I have trained myself to take whatever emotion I might be feeling and quickly move it into the chamber of my thoughts, where I can think about it and be more in control. It might be said of me that I live from my head. Many others are just the opposite. They are governed by their emotions. Their capacity to feel often overrides any analytical frameworks.
In the present age, we have come to think about people as either feelers or thinkers. We speak in terms of the dual realities of the head and the heart as though they were two separate places. As a result, we tend to wind up with either an overactive intellect or an overwhelming intuition. Both of these scenarios result from becoming trapped and isolated in our inner world. We live in our heads or in our hearts.
This taxonomy is foreign to the psalmist. Why? Because the psalmist sees these as one integrated reality. There is no head and heart. There is the situation, the person (or the people), and God. The psalmist has learned to live in the situation, out loud, in the holy mingling of feeling and thought, before God. There is no escaping into thoughts on the one hand or feelings on the other. The interior life integrates itself openly and outwardly in the safety of the sanctuary of the presence of God. Whatever is inside, the psalmist sings out unto God. The psalmist trains us to live deeply from our innermost self, yet in an open, honest, unveiled, and out-loud way before God. I want you to take a look at Ephesians 3:14–19 and see if this is not exactly what Paul was praying for us to experience.
This is why music and singing and song are so essential to being a human. Song leads us into a place where knowing gets beyond intellect and feeling gets beyond emotion. Singing leads to an outing of our inner person. We speak often about head and heart connecting at the point of our hands, which does have a nice alliterative ring to it, but I believe that head and heart (whatever those actually are) come together in our audible voices, when we sing it all out before God.
Ask Yourself. Share with Another.
What do you think? How do you feel about this? What’s holding you back? Others hearing you? Could this be why Jesus said to go into a room, close the door, and go for it? (See Matthew 6:6.)
For the Awakening,
J.D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com