I’ve always loved the book of Psalms. I am often reading through the psalms. In fact, in the earlier days of my journey, I followed what I heard was Billy Graham’s system for reading Psalms and Proverbs (5 psalms and 1 chapter of Proverbs per day, reading through each book once a month).
I want to pass on my love and appreciation for the psalms to our kids. I recently wrote about 5 Children’s Books for Family Devotions. The list included Psalms for Young Children. The book, which is nicely done, includes a few sentences from a number of the psalms.
During this past Lenten season, I was re-reading parts of 24 Hours That Changed the World by Adam Hamilton (see my blog post on the book). In the book, Hamilton discusses the psalms, noting that Jesus and the disciples would have sung selected verses from Psalms 113-118 following the Passover seder meal.
Hamilton writes …
Jesus turned regularly to the psalms, drawing from them throughout his public ministry. He taught from the psalms, he sang from the psalms at the Last Supper, and it was the psalms that he prayed as he hung on the cross. Clearly they were an important part of his spiritual life. If we seek to learn spiritually from Jesus, we will want to become familiar with the psalms. Like Jesus, we will draw comfort from selected verses. The Gospels do not show him reciting entire psalms but rather choosing this or that verse, often drawing on beautiful, noble, and lofty verses nestled among less noble, even vengeful, verses in particular psalms.
The psalms represent the heart and soul of the Bible, and Jesus’ use of them during the last twenty-four hours of his life beckons us to become more familiar with them. (32).
Are the psalms an important part of your spiritual life? How do you read the psalms?