Yesterday, I enjoyed leading another of our Come Away retreats. I reviewed some spiritual reading from a while back and came across this word of wisdom from Thomas Merton’s Praying the Psalms.
“No matter whether we understand a Psalm at first or not, we should take it up with this end in view: to make use of it as a prayer that will enable us to surrender ourselves to God. If we keep this one thing in mind, the various Psalms will gradually yield their mysteries to us, and we will begin to find out that certain ones fit our own condition and our own experience better than others. This recognition of a special appropriateness for our own lives, in particular Psalms, is an actual grace of God. It is an invitation of the Holy Spirit, urging us to pay more attention to these Psalms, to use them more frequently in our prayers and meditations, to adopt them for our own use. They become “our” Psalms. We do not have to tell other people about our preference, preach about it or write books about it. We simply need to take possession of these Psalms, “move in” to them, so to speak. Or rather we move them into the house of our own soul so that we think of our ordinary experiences in their light and with their words.” (Thomas Merton. Praying the Psalms. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1956, pp. 17-18.)
I shared a few thoughts from Psalm 84 recently in “Deeply at Home in God.” I am deeply drawn to the longing and thirst I hear in this psalm for the Living God. I don’t like feeling thirsty. I’m often tempted to quench my thirst in ways that leave me thirstier.
Is there a psalm God has been using in your own life to invite you to place of deeper surrender to Him (and therefore freedom in Him)?
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