Good morning, today is Friday, May 8, 2020. My name is Keith and I am one of the pastors at Green Acres Baptist Church in Athens, GA.

Well, we are reading through the books of 1 and 2 Peter this month during the season of Eastertide, but today I wanted to do something a little special. One of my favorite living poets, Malcolm Guite, is starting a new series on the Psalms that I wanted to share with you all today. I use his poetry in my own spiritual formation and I wanted to share his work today with you. 

The Psalms have been foundational for my own spiritual development, but they have also been a foundation to my own academic study on the topic of worship as well. As a Worship Pastor and someone who cares deeply about the act of gathered and scattered worship, I don’t know that there is anything more important that we can do than read the Psalms over and over again and let them mess with our understanding of the world.

We read the Psalms as poetry developed in the history of the Hebrew people, a heritage that is not what most would claim to be own birth heritage. So, we read them with an “out there and back then” mentality, but also with some sort of “in here and right now” understanding because of the Holy Spirit’s continual shaping of our prayer language by these Psalms.

Our prayers should be shaped by the Psalms, by the actual metaphors and images used. The world the Psalms paint for the reader through its poetic language is the world we as Christian’s are being invited in to.

And praying with the language of the Psalms is somewhat intuitive. We can pray the actual Psalms, sort of like set prayers, or we can adopt the imagery and metaphors the Psalms give us to pray our own prayers.

The Psalms shaped the spiritual life of Christ himself and have been the foundation in both Jewish and Christian worship for thousands of years. I believe that in our moving to the heart of God and living out of our belonging to Him the Psalms are what actually give us the worldview to live according to the life that Jesus is offering.

So, today I am going to read Psalm 1 and then play the audio of Malcolm Guite’s poem as a reflection on Psalm 1. I have linked Guite’s website in the show notes and I highly encourage you to go and read the poem yourself from him when you get a chance. Remember, Psalm 1 works sort of like how an introduction chapter in any book would work. Psalm 1 stands on its own, but it also gives us the guide by which to actually read the whole rest of the book of Psalms.

Psalm 1

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Find Malcolm Guite’s work and this poem here!

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/beatus-vir-a-reflection-on-psalm-1/