|
Introduction:
Prayer is profound. Prayer is powerful. Prayer is
absolutely serious. With that in mind, we might think that there
is nothing playful or fun about praying. In fact, we would likely
take affront at someone acting like there might be that aspect to
prayer. That doesn’t seem to be the psalmists’ approach. Maybe
I see it this way simply because of my own background in language
and literature. However, I can’t help but see a fun side to
prayer in the psalms. The psalmists did not simply stand before
God and in dry prose lay out their prayers. No one would ever
confuse a psalm for a legal document that might put us to sleep if
they read it for too long. The psalmists reveled in creativity.
They worked hard at expressing themselves in creative ways. They
rarely simply said something, rather they wrapped their prayers in
word pictures to draw out emotions and drive home their pleas.
Perhaps creativity is not an absolute must to proper and valid
prayer, however, if we will pray like the Psalmists, we will learn
to pray creatively. Discussion: I.
Put words to our speechlessness. A.
Today, we often pride ourselves in being speechless.
Something is so great we can’t put it into words. Something is
so sad we can’t comment on it. Something is so shocking we can
only register our surprise with dumfounded looks. We can carry
that into our prayer lives and act as though the greatest thing we
can say to God is simply that we are speechless in His presence.
The psalmists would have seen that as a great cop-out, not great
praise. Perhaps the part that is most moving about the psalmists
is how they crafted phrases and pictures in order to put words to
the unspeakable emotions they felt in prayer. B.
I love what J. Ellsworth Kalas says about this in his book,
Longing to Pray: How the Psalms Teach Us to Talk to God: You’ve known the frustration, I’m
sure, in the experiences of human friendship and love, of saying
to someone, “I just wish I could find the words to tell you what
you mean to me” or “what our friendship means to me.” So it
is that the psalmist wants a “new song.” And his exuberance is
such that he calls on everyone else to join his choir: “all the
earth,” “all the peoples.” But our wonderful spiritual ancestor
doesn’t say, as we might, “I can’t find words to express
what I feel.” He would see this, I think, as an unholy cop-out.
So he launches into rolling phrases of praise, making us the
richer for it (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2006, p 52). C.
If we are going to pray as the psalmists did, then we will
not be satisfied with declaring we can’t put our thoughts into
words. Rather, we will work and finding the words and phrases,
drawing the word pictures that proclaim what we are thinking and
feeling about God. II.
Examples of creativity from the Psalms. A.
In the Psalms, God is not
just our leader who rules or our teacher that instructs. He is our
Shepherd (Psalms
23), leading us by quiet waters and in paths of
righteousness. We are sheep, walking up the dangerous and deadly
valleys to the mountaintop tablelands under the eyes of predators.
B.
The psalmists do not simply trust and rely on God. He is
their rock, their mighty tower, their fortress, their shield,
their deliverer, the horn of their salvation, their stronghold (Psalm
18:1-2). C.
The psalmists did not merely have enemies who were trying
to kill them. Their enemies were dogs that come back each evening
howling and prowling about the city. They bellow with their mouths
and have swords on their lips. They wander about for food and
growl if they don’t get any (Psalm
59:6-7, 14-15). D.
The sins of the psalmists were not just mistakes that
caused them problems. Their sins caused their bones to waste away.
Their strength was dried up as if by the summer’s heat (Psalm
32:3-4). E.
The psalmists did not merely want to be forgiven of their
iniquities. They wanted to be washed thoroughly and cleansed. They
wanted to be purged with hyssop to be whiter than snow. They
wanted a new heart and a new spirit. They wanted the bones God had
broken to rejoice (Psalm
51:2, 7-12). F.
The psalmists did not merely fast.
Rather, tears became their food day and night (Psalm
42:3). They had ashes as bread and tears as drink (Psalm
102:9). G.
Perhaps it is these kinds of pictures that lead us to
believe we cannot pray as the psalmists did. Yet, what heartfelt
prayers they left us, prayers that dramatize what we face and
feel. They left us prayers that capture the heart and express our
deepest needs and thoughts. They set a great example for us. III.
Developing creativity in prayer. A.
Don’t
be too hard on yourself:
While many have held up the psalms as classic poetry to be learned
for its literary value, I’m not suggesting you be creative in
prayer in order to be a great poet. If you creativity never
reaches the level of Frost, Dickinson, Byron, or Keats, that’s
okay. The reason I am suggesting creativity is simply to force us
to think through what we are really feeling and want to take to
God. I want us to learn to sing “the new songs,” offer the new
praises, recognize God is worth the effort we take to think
through creative prayers. But a prayer does not have to be poetic
to be proper. Remember, sometimes we do struggle with what to
pray. Take comfort that the Spirit is interceding on your behalf
with groanings to deep for words where you don’t know how to
pray. (Romans
8:26-27). B.
Be
willing to work at it:
Let’s face it, this kind of creativity rarely just tumbles off
our tongues. It takes thought, effort, and work. If you remember
our very first lesson in this series, we looked at a prayer and a
psalm of Hezekiah in Isaiah
38. In Isaiah
38:2, we read the prayer. In Isaiah
38:10-20, we read the psalm he wrote from his prayer.
There is no doubt this psalm would be used by others in prayer.
But we cannot deny that the psalm took much more effort and work
than the very simple prayer. Clearly, this demonstrates to us that
the simply, natural, from the cuff prayer is legitimate, helpful,
and valid. I’m not saying we aren’t really praying unless we
are being really creative. However, we do learn that if we want to
find deeper expressions to our petitions and our praise, it is
going to take work. It is going to take thinking about prayer
before we pray. C.
Get
comfortable with figurative language:
Metaphor, simile, hyperbole, symbolism: these are the tools of the
psalmists. You don’t have to know the names of the different
classes of figurative speech. But if we will be creative as the
psalmists were, we must be comfortable with speaking in figure. In
Psalm
51, the psalmist uses figure over and over again. “Purge
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” Did the psalmist really
mean he’s asking God give him a bath and scrub him with a hyssop
branch? Or was he talking about his need for forgiveness and
spiritual purity? “Let the bones you have broken rejoice.” Did
the psalmist really mean God had actually and literally broken
some bones? Or was he talking about how beaten down he felt from
his guilt before God? “My sin is ever before me. Against you,
you only I have sinned…” Did he mean that he had a picture of
his sin that stayed in front of his eyes? Did he mean that he had
never sinned against anyone else? Or was he exaggerating in order
to demonstrate the great guilt he felt over his sins. “I was
brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me.” Is the psalmist really saying his mother was a fornicator
and his actual birth was an act of sin? Or is he again
exaggerating his guilt to express how deeply he feels it. If we
will pray like this we must get comfortable with figurative
language. D.
Don’t
be bound by ancient figures:
Remember that these psalms were written during different times.
The figurative language works for them because there was a
cultural framework for those figures. We don’t have to use their
figures. We can use figures from our own experience and culture.
Does anyone really still trust in horses and chariots (Psalms
20:7)? Or do we trust in tanks, jets, missiles? Nobody in
our culture cleanses or scours anything with hyssop (Psalm
51:7). But we do with bleach, Tide, or Brillo pads. I know
that purge me with hyssop sounds poetic, but does anybody here
even know what that means? Does it really express something we are
thinking if we don’t know what it means? I do offer one word of
caution, we do want to be careful in our public prayers what kind
of creative figures we use. We don’t want those we are leading
in prayer to be distracted by our figures of speech. E.
Read
poetry:
The fact is, we don’t have to be completely original. We are
allowed to use someone else’s word pictures and phrases to
express what is on our heart. Start by reading the Psalms
regularly. As you find phrases and pictures that sing to you,
adopt them in your prayers. However, you can also read other
poetry. You’ll be amazed at what great imagery we can find in
the writings of men. How many people have been moved by Alfred
Lord Tennyson’s Crossing
the Bar and adopted his word picture to express their prayers
around loss of a loved one or their own sickness and death? F.
Just
try:
Anytime you’re tempted to say, “Words cannot express…” Dig
deep and try to express it. Think of similar experiences and
relate them to whatever your trying to express in prayer. Think of
parallel thoughts and concepts and tie them together in your
prayers. Experiment with them in your prayers until you find the
pictures that really fit your meaning. Again, I caution too much
experimentation in public praying. We don’t want to distract
those we are leading in prayer from the praying by what may end up
being a silly attempt to make a point in prayer. Going back to an
earlier example, it might sound too silly to ask God to cleanse us
with steel wool or purify us with Lysol. Of course, I wonder how
it sounded to the first person who said, “You know that hyssop
branch we use to scour things clean with? Cleanse me like that,
God, and I’ll be clean.” Conclusion: While we have learned some great and profound lessons about prayer from the psalmists, I have to admit that for me, this is the most enjoyable lesson. This is the part where I realize that prayer doesn’t have to be a chore. It can be an exciting experiment in language. It can be fun look at life, our experiences, our needs, our praises. We don’t have to be limited by the basic dry prose of literalistic speech. We can branch out and really try to put words and word pictures to those great feelings, needs, desires we want to carry to God. The psalmists did it. So can we.
Glory
to God in the church by Christ Jesus
|
||||||||||
