Biking around my NASA affiliated Houston neighborhood is one of my simple joys.  When neighbors ask if we’re “the family that bikes to Church,” I smile with delight and gratitude.  Yes. Yes, we are.

Honestly, this isn’t something that I would instinctively insert into my daily prayer.  Yet, studying the Psalms has prompted me to ask at any given moment: What is my Psalm?  This simple question helps integrate prayerful conversation with God into the ordinary moments of daily life.

To pray in the style of the Psalms – or to pray using the words of the Psalms themselves – it’s helpful to know a little background.

The Book of Psalms is a collection of prayers and songs from throughout Israel’s history.  They are prayerful responses to real, specific life experiences.  And as varied as our life experiences may be on any given day, so are the Psalms!  This variety and connection to life is why the Psalms were so often sung and prayed in worship by the ancient Israelites, sung and prayed by Jesus and the apostles, and continue to be sung and prayed by us today.

Acknowledging simple joys with a Psalm of Praise is a beautiful way to recognize God’s presence in all things.

How?

Begin by inviting praise, such as: “Let us praise God!” Then articulate the specific reasons for praising God in that moment. And conclude by recapping the praise.

Look at how Psalm 117 – which is the shortest Psalm, with only two verses – provides a great example of this basic structure:

As I bike through my neighborhood, if I were to use the words from Scripture, I might recite the final verse of Psalm 150

But the beautiful gift of the Psalms is how they also teach us how to pray our own Psalm of Praise.

Praise God

For my adorable green bike

For its form and its function

and its matching green basket

For the ability to ride

For my wonderful neighborhood

For biking to the homes of friends,

to fun at the pool,

to Church,

to Starbucks,

to CVS.

For the opportunities I have

to share this with my family

whom I love

For all that I have; for all that I am,

Praise God

Ask yourself: What is my Psalm?  And then say it, write it, sing it, pray it.

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I struggle with Waiting.  Patience is not my strongest virtue.

I’m not talking about the banalities of waiting in traffic or waiting behind a check-writer in the check-out line of the grocery store.

I’m talking about Waiting to hear news about a job in the midst of unemployment. Waiting for a diagnosis.  Waiting for that life-changing email or phone call.  Waiting for a response.

Waiting for more information so that you can move beyond the gazillion choose-your-own-adventure style possibilities in your head and actually start doing the “next thing,” whatever that may be.

Most recently, this Waiting sat like a ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach.  My boys got sick while we were visiting my parents in Malaysia.

When my younger one gets sick, it’s always been no-energy with a scary-high fever for the first 24 hours.  After that first 24-hours, the high fever always breaks and then, I can tell whether it’s worthy of a doctor’s visit or just a passing bug.  My older one has a similar cycle, but the high-fever isn’t quite so scary.  It was only a 24 hour wait.  I have waited longer for other things, but this was my children… in another country… it was just hard.

Waiting is hard.

It’s not that I don’t have hope.  I have confidence that the grace of God will help me face whatever challenges may come.  But as a person of action, I’ll be the first to admit that the Waiting is just hard.

• Can you relate?  Do you struggle with Waiting?

Of course the Waiting provides us with an invitation to trust and an opportunity to pray.  But I am still struck by how hard that Waiting can be.

•  Who do you know that needs the encouragement, affirmation, and validation that we find in the Psalms?

Waiting Alone by Max Wolfe licensed under CC BY 2.0

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