Dear Human is a Verb Community,
This is the fourth installment of our Praying with Scripture and Song mini-series. Each episode take the Psalm and facilitates Lectio Divina and Prayer.
This week, someone I love had a major health crisis and I’m dealing with other hard life challenges that can’t be easily ‘figured out.’ I have spent days doing what I imagine you have done in your own hard seasons: looking around at all of it, the fragility, the massive loss, the uncertainty, the things I have taken completely for granted, and saying something that is part prayer and part yell. Something like, What the %$#, God?
Sometimes I don’t know what else to do with what life throws at me. Have you ever screamed (even if only in your mind) something like that? Good thing God can take it.
I set out to develop this mini-series of spiritual practices for anyone else who would listen, and it is clear—these are for me. You get to listen in on what Julene needs right now—and this week, I need Psalm 95.
Forty years of people who had watched God work, who had seen the manna and the water from the rock and the cloud and the fire, and still couldn’t quite trust what they were seeing. The wilderness was real and long and confusing. Fear kept winning. I recognize that.
Drop everything and listen.
That’s what this episode asks of us. Listening is hard when life is breaking open. The hard things don’t resolve just because we get quiet. And yet the Shepherd is still speaking, and somewhere in this psalm is the word that rest, real rest, is still available.
I need that this week. I think maybe you do too.
The song for this episode is called Drop Everything. You can listen to it directly here: Drop Everything; Psalm 95.
Peace,
Julene
If you’ve missed a prayer practice in this series, you can access the first three here:
Episode 1, February 11- Soften me, Oh God: Psalm 51
Episode 2: February 18 - Hiding Place, Psalm 32
Episode 3: February 25 - Still Walking, Psalm 121
What is coming:
Episode 5: March 11 - You Might Be Real; Psalm 23
Episode 6: March 18 - Wait for Morning; Psalm 130
Episode 7: March 25 - God Still Lives; Psalm 118
Welcome
Welcome to Human is a Verb, a podcast about practicing the sacred work of being human. My name is Julene Tegerstrand. I’m a spiritual director and co-founder of Everyday Peacemaking, a ministry my husband Steve and I are building around the belief that our inner life and our relational life are deeply connected. This podcast is an extension of Everyday Peacemaking.
This is the fourth episode of a seven-part mini-series called Praying with Scripture and Song.
What we do here is simple. We’re going to pray with scripture. We’ll practice some stillness. We’ll grow in our inner capacity for peace so that we can carry it somewhere into our real lives.
Today we’re praying with Psalm 95, verses six through eleven, using The Message. We’re using an ancient practice of the church called Lectio Divina, which helps us move from the surface of a text down into the depths.
Arriving
Before we enter the text, let’s take a moment to arrive.
Feel whatever is holding you right now. The chair beneath you, the ground under your feet. Let your hands rest somewhere comfortable.
We’re going to take five slow breaths together. The exhale will be a little longer than the inhale, and that’s intentional. A longer exhale sends a small physical signal to your nervous system, like: we’re okay right now. We can listen.
Breathe in: 1, 2, 3, 4. Breathe out: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Repeat five times, then let your breath return to its natural rhythm.
Notice the space around you. Notice what you see. Feel your hands, feel your feet, and then just return to wherever it is that you are sitting or standing.
About This Practice
The ancient church believed that scripture was a living thing, a mystery with multiple layers waiting to open us, and that the way we enter those layers is through receptivity.
For this Lectio Divina practice, we will move through four of these layers:
• The literal sense: what is actually happening in the text
• The Christological sense: how this text opens into the larger story of God and Christ
• The moral sense: what this text asks of us right now, in our real lives
• The mystical sense: a place of stillness where we simply rest
Round One: The Literal Sense
In this first round, we’re listening for what the text is actually doing.
As I read, notice the movement. The psalm opens in warmth, communal and expansive, full of we and our. Come, let us worship. We are his people. He is our God. And then a voice breaks in and says: Drop everything and listen. That’s an interruption born of God’s love for us. It’s like someone who sees us about to step into traffic and reaches out a hand.
Notice that movement as I read aloud.
So come, let us worship. Bow before him, on your knees before God, who made us. Oh yes, he’s our God, and we’re the people of his pastures, the flock he feeds.
Drop everything and listen. Listen as he speaks. Don’t turn a deaf ear, as in the bitter uprising, as on the day of the wilderness test, when your ancestors turned and put me to the test. For forty years they watched me at work among them. As over and over they tried my patience and I was provoked. Oh, I was provoked.
Can’t they keep their minds on God for five minutes? Do they simply refuse to walk down my road? Exasperated, I exploded: They’ll never get where they’re headed, never be able to sit down and rest.
Hold what you just heard. Drop everything and listen.
(Pause for reflection.)
Round Two: The Christological Sense
In this second round, we listen for how this text opens into the wider story of God in Christ.
As I read again, let one phrase become an anchor for you. Maybe it’s the flock he feeds. Maybe something else will catch your attention more. Hold whatever it is you choose.
The early Christians who prayed this psalm heard the flock he feeds and thought of Jesus saying: I am the good shepherd. My sheep hear my voice. The God whose voice breaks into the psalm is the same God who became flesh and walked among us. Let that open something as I read again.
So come, let us worship. Bow down before him, on your knees before God who made us. Oh yes, he’s our God, and we’re the people of his pastures, the flock he feeds.
Drop everything and listen. Listen as he speaks. Don’t turn a deaf ear, as in the bitter uprising, as on the day of the wilderness test, when your ancestors turned and put me to the test. For forty years they watched me at work among them. As over and over they tried my patience and I was provoked. Oh, I was provoked.
Can’t they keep their minds on God for five minutes? Do they simply refuse to walk down my road? Exasperated, I exploded: They’ll never get where they’re headed, never be able to sit down and rest.
Notice what word or phrase is staying with you, whatever genuinely caught your ear. Hold that.
(Pause for reflection.)
Round Three: The Moral Sense
This is the round where we bring our actual life into the light of what we’ve been hearing.
The text says: Drop everything and listen. And it carries that old story of people who couldn’t quite do it. They had seen God work for forty years. The manna, the water from the rock, the cloud and the fire. They just kept trusting their fear more than the voice that was trying to lead them. They kept managing things themselves rather than following.
This is a deeply human story. And it deserves to be held with compassion for ourselves and an openness to what God might have for us.
I’ll ask a few questions and then pause for you to prayerfully consider them.
Where do you notice yourself struggling to listen right now?
(Pause.)
In the line, “Can’t they keep their minds on God for five minutes?” invite that to land in you. Take an honest look at where your attention keeps going. If it is pulled away, what pulls it away? What has you bracing, or spinning, or restless?
(Pause.)
If anything comes to the surface, take this opportunity to listen to God in prayer. Now bring one specific situation to prayer. Maybe it’s a relationship, a decision, a fear, or just a concern you’ve been carrying.
Round 4: The Mystical Sense
The last line of this passage speaks of people who were never able to sit down and rest. They kept moving past it. The rest was there, and they couldn’t receive it. So now we practice receiving. Wherever you are, whether you’re walking, driving, or sitting down, I invite you to allow something in you to stop and to rest.
Let yourself feel held.
(Extended pause.)
The Song: Drop Everything
The song you’re about to hear was written from inside the psalm and created using an AI musical tool called Suno. When I developed the lyrics for these songs, I’m really trying to hold two things at once: the world the psalm came from, and the world I’m actually living in. The distance between those two is usually smaller than I expect.
Psalm 95 was the Invitatory, the very first prayer monks sang every morning before anything else. Come, let us worship. Drop everything and listen. Today, if you hear his voice. Every morning, the same invitation, the same word: today.
What I kept sitting with as I worked on these lyrics was the wilderness story at the center of the psalm. Those forty years weren’t years of abandonment, even though I imagine they felt like it. God was present every single day. The people just kept being unable to trust what they were seeing. They chose their fear over the voice that was trying to lead them somewhere restful and good.
The rest was always available. They kept walking past it.
I wanted the song to carry God speaking, the voice of the Shepherd saying: even now, even today, I will lead you. I will feed you. I am listening to you too.
(Song: “Drop Everything”)
Closing Prayer
God, who pastures and feeds us, God who speaks into the middle of our singing and says, listen, we come to you as the flock we actually are. Sometimes scattered. A lot of times distracted. Trusting our own management of our lives a little more than we’d like to admit.
For everyone listening who feels like they’ve been in the wilderness a long time: please come near. Remind us that your rest is here, with you, and that it always has been.
For the ones whose attention keeps splintering, who can’t seem to hold still for five minutes: let this be enough.
For the ones who have been managing and steering and holding everything together: grant the particular mercy of being led, for a moment, of being the flock and trusting the shepherd.
And for all of us today, in whatever situation we find ourselves, we ask that you go before us. Please keep speaking. We want to be people who hear your voice and follow.
Amen.
Outro
Thank you for praying with us today. The music in this episode was created using Suno. You can find a link to the song “Drop Everything” on my Substack at humanisaverb.substack.com, and it will also be in the show notes.
Human is a Verb exists because I believe the inner life is our foundation. The practices we do here, the stillness, the listening, the honest prayer, they’re all how we grow the capacity for peace that eventually shapes how we live with the people around us. That’s the whole project.
If that resonates with you, there are two ways to go deeper. The first is soul companioning, or one-on-one spiritual direction with me. If you’re in a season of transition, I’d love to accompany you. You can find more information at www.everydaypeacemaking.org.
The second is becoming a paid subscriber to Human is a Verb. A monthly subscription is just a few dollars, and a yearly subscription is $70. Your support is what makes this work sustainable.
And if paying isn’t in the cards for you right now, that is completely okay. Sharing this episode with someone who might need it is a genuine gift to them and to this work. The larger this community grows, the more this can offer.
In the next episode, we’ll be praying with Psalm 23, and I’ll share a song called “You Might Be Real.” I hope you’ll come back and pray with us.
May you live and breathe and pray in such a way that you grow into your true humanity.
Get full access to Human Is A Verb: Julene Tegerstrand, Ph.D. at humanisaverb.substack.com/subscribe
