About Psalms
"Psalms in Conversation" |
The other sub-sections in the 'About Psalms' menu are 'conversations' about specific aspects of the Biblical Psalms.
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I hadn’t really planned to write on the Psalms. I just started doing it while on holiday. God’s Spirit got to work and I just kept opening the Psalms, one after another, and letting myself feel them and critique them and apply them to particular situations. It has been fun, and curiously easy, and I’m still going.
Like the Psalms, these reflections are a mixed bag. Some are written primarily for public worship, some for private prayer. Some come from the heart, some come more from the head.
They are not translations of scripture, but a response to it. So you need to read the Biblical Psalm alongside my version. I hope that this will spark in you your own response to the Psalm; write your own ‘conversation’!
Lesley Brandt attempted something similar in his Psalms Now. He writes in his preface, “I have tried to express what these Psalms say to me and about me. … to indicate something of the honesty and humanity of the psalm-writers in their daily conflicts, and to encourage us to be as honest in our pursuit of truth and our walk with God.” (1974, p.5).
Unlike Brandt, I come to each Psalm assuming that it is also about Jesus (Matthew 5:17). Jesus loved and lived the Psalms more than anyone else, and the early church radically re-read Psalms through his Spirit (e.g. Acts 2:25-31).
I hope that my crazy mixed up versions will send you running back to the Real Psalm to see what it Really says. I hope that you will disagree with my twists & turns of language & logic! ; these ancient poems are there to be argued with, grappled with, re-written and etched into the soul over and over again.
My style is part-poetry part-prose, so is a bit short on punctuation, sorry if that annoys you.
Biblical quotes are taken mostly from the NRSV, but other translations are used as sources and adapted.
Silvia Purdie, 2014
Like the Psalms, these reflections are a mixed bag. Some are written primarily for public worship, some for private prayer. Some come from the heart, some come more from the head.
They are not translations of scripture, but a response to it. So you need to read the Biblical Psalm alongside my version. I hope that this will spark in you your own response to the Psalm; write your own ‘conversation’!
Lesley Brandt attempted something similar in his Psalms Now. He writes in his preface, “I have tried to express what these Psalms say to me and about me. … to indicate something of the honesty and humanity of the psalm-writers in their daily conflicts, and to encourage us to be as honest in our pursuit of truth and our walk with God.” (1974, p.5).
Unlike Brandt, I come to each Psalm assuming that it is also about Jesus (Matthew 5:17). Jesus loved and lived the Psalms more than anyone else, and the early church radically re-read Psalms through his Spirit (e.g. Acts 2:25-31).
I hope that my crazy mixed up versions will send you running back to the Real Psalm to see what it Really says. I hope that you will disagree with my twists & turns of language & logic! ; these ancient poems are there to be argued with, grappled with, re-written and etched into the soul over and over again.
My style is part-poetry part-prose, so is a bit short on punctuation, sorry if that annoys you.
Biblical quotes are taken mostly from the NRSV, but other translations are used as sources and adapted.
Silvia Purdie, 2014