Day 26: Psalm 150

The Psalms have not only been the great hymnbook of the church, it’s the great prayer book of the church, too.

I probably should have written about this more already, but the Psalms invite us to see what prayer is: an awareness of our Creator and speaking to Him as if He’s listening. If I’m honest, prayer has always been one of the harder spiritual disciplines for me. Perhaps because I always saw it as just that, a discipline that I needed to do whether I wanted to or not. I attached it to guilt for so long, it was just something you did when you felt bad about yourself. The Psalms would remind us that there is a difference between prayers and praying. Saying our prayers, whether before dinner or bed, or while we are in church are formal acts and important. Praying is something else.

Years ago I read an Austrian monk who said that praying is simply put, “Waking up.” It’s waking to mysteries around you. It’s easy to get lost in the language of “prayers.” Is this “intercession”? Is this “petition”? Is this “thanksgiving”?

The language of praying is waking up to the presence of God no matter where you are or what you are doing. Praying is an awareness of the gift of being alive. Listen to the Psalmist:

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Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Psalm 150:1-6

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I love how the Psalmist ends verse 6. He says it again! This isn’t random melody, this is lyrical prayer. He’s not doing his prayers. He’s praying. If we understood the difference between prayers and praying, like the Psalmist, we wouldn’t treat prayer like an oxygen mask that we pull down in desperate moments. We would treat it like oxygen, an always present need.

Tonight while we ate tacos, we said our prayer of thanks before the meal, but while I was eating the taco I was practicing praying. I was filled with gratitude that the warm weather had arrived. I was filled with gratitude for the paprika. I had a conversation with Dane about Super Mario Brothers and I was praying. Do you see the difference? It’s in these little moments that we cross into the awareness that we are alive - now you are praying.

At the moment of awareness, we look up and we encounter the One who gave us life. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!

Jared