Monthly Prayer Practice

In her spiritual classic, Soul Feast, Marjorie Thompson points out that we read a love letter much differently than we read the news.

 

A love letter, or a love text! Oh how we ponder, absorb, wonder, soak in the words, letting the written and the unwritten sink deeply into our souls.

 

The news? Not so much.  We scan for information, perhaps dig for more background, then move on.

 

What if we read the psalms as though they were love letters sent by our Beloved? 

 

Because that is, after all, what psalms can be for us.

__________

 

This month, pick a psalm a week and live with it; read it slowly, savor it, pray with it, read it again.

 

Or read it five times a day, as Rev. Charles Allen recommends in God’s Psychiatry. 

 

He favors the 23rd Psalm, saying “The 23rd Psalm is a pattern of thinking, and when a mind becomes saturated with it, a new way of thinking and a new life are the result.”

 

On Page 2 of this month's Prayer Calendar, you will find Rev. Mary Sue Evers’ list "Psalms to Get You Started: A Handy Top Ten".