This week’s Song To Live By is Psalm 4

Tom writes:

“Answer me my God… be gracious to me and hear my prayer… how long… how long”. Have you ever felt the indignation, the shame of unanswered prayers, of the unmet yearning for good and necessary things? Music often puts its arm around us in those moments. Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” galvanised the American Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. “I was born by a river in a little tent. Oh, and just like the river I’ve been running ever since. It’s been a long, a long time coming…” But those are just the lyrics. There is something more potent, more prayerful about those lyrics set to the melody, to the words soaring above the stringed instruments. That combination is what galvanises people; that combination is what begins to see joy creep in, to enable lying down in safety knowing that your requests have reached the ears of the Lord Most High and that someday, somehow a change is gonna come.

Sometimes we need to let the psalms sing to us; we need to wrap them around us, to imbibe the atmosphere of their composition. God wrote them as clouds to envelop us, as tents for us to dwell in, as soul music for us to journey through. I wonder if you hear the music of Psalm 4? I wonder if the syncopation of its serenade has swept you up into its hope? Has it given you more joy in your heart than they have when their grain and wine abound? These things aren’t just words. These words aren’t just poetry. There is the substance of the Kingdom murmuring in the deep places of these psalms.

You’ve just got to sing them, you’ve just got to push through the rushed and superficial engagement until they become music to you. Because when they become music to you then you meet the Lord in them. And when the Lord puts his arms around us in a Psalm; then a change really can come.

A prayer

Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and do it again. Strengthen me against sin. Let me offer sacrifices to you that are right. Let me put my trust in you. I need you and ask you to lift up the light of your face upon me. In Jesus name, Amen.