Believe it or not, there was a time when the thought of making or even reproducing music with a computer, especially a personal computer, was wildly hi-tech. My earliest Apple computers could only play one note, one frequency at a time. I remember a great milestone in the development of (amateur) digital audio when I first owned a computer that could play a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) file. I even remember what the first meaningful MIDI file I ever listened to was: “You Are My Hiding Place” an old Maranatha Music chorus by Michael Ledner. The MIDI version was pretty well done – I hummed the tune and heard the harmonies in my head for years.
I haven’t been able to find the exact version, but in honor of Psalm 32:7, here are links to a Maranatha singers version and to a guitar instrumental version. There is also a nice Maranatha Praise instrumental version on an album called “Praise Gold”, available on itunes, but it’s not available on Youtube.
In context in Psalm 32 this verse follows the Psalmist’s meditation on the withering nature of un-confessed sin and the blessing of confession and forgiveness. I don’t think we can experience God as our hiding place or our deliverer or our guide without first confessing our sins, receiving forgiveness of them through trust in Jesus and repenting of them.
One of my favorite blogs is “Jesus Creed” by Scot McKnight (with frequent contributors). The site includes many different kinds of topics: contemporary evangelicalism, the emergent church, science and Bible, book reviews, etc. Scot also comments directly on Scripture, and has been doing a series on the Psalms under the title “Our Common Prayerbook.”
He’s only doing one or at most two Psalms a week, so we’re about to pass him in our hundred days in the Psalms. But I thought his five entries on Psalm 25 were great commentary and a great thought process. Here’s the link to the first one: Our Common Prayerbook 25-1
Excerpt: Prayer is soul-ish wandering. It wanders from who we are and what we have done and what life is like into the presence of God where it again wanders into who God is and what God is like and what God has done and what God can do and what God will do, and then back again to us and then back again to God. This is not done casually or flippantly, but from the heart and soul and mind and spirit.
I wonder if we think of prayer as “soul-ish wandering” enough. I wonder if we think our mental meanderings and ponderings and worries are aspects of prayer. They are prayer if they are all done in God’s presence, whether we are talking to God directly or not.
Psalm 25 is another splendid example of soul-ish wandering. It is an almost complete alphabetical psalm where the first line begins with a new letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It wanders first into the presence of God or into consciousness of God. “To you, YHWH, I lift up my soul, my God. In you I have trusted — may I not be ashamed.” Here is the disposition of genuine prayer: nothing more, and nothing less than, entering into God’s very presence in trust. Prayer, especially if it is soul-ish wandering, offers our very selves to God.
One of my favorite albums for many years has been “Follow the Narrow” from a group called Clear. The group no longer exists and never issued another album, but I continue to like the one they did.
They have a really nice setting of (part of) Psalm 18 called “Wide Open Spaces.” I hoped to link to it this morning on Youtube, but I was a little surprised to discover that there is no Youtube version of the song (or most of the album). So, I says to myself, if I can’t find one, I’ll make one.
And I did. You may recognize several of the clips from recent sermons.
This Psalm is one in which the Psalmist seems very confident in his righteousness. Partly this is the same confidence we’ve seen in other Psalms – the confidence of a believer (as discussed in last week’s sermon, August 22nd.)
But many students of Scripture believe that Psalm 17 was written in the context of 1 Samuel 26 (or possibly 1 Samuel 24) in which David spares Saul’s life because Saul is the king, the Lord’s anointed.
If you read 1 Samuel 26, you can better understand phrases like:
Psalm 17:4-5 (NIV) 4 As for the deeds of men– by the word of your lips I have kept myself from the ways of the violent. 5 My steps have held to your paths; my feet have not slipped.