Psalm Week—what can I say? It was an outrageous idea: get a bunch of people together at each others’ houses, and read Psalms out loud together. The book of Psalms is divided into 5 sections, so we did it over 5 consecutive nights last week. We invited the whole congregation, but since it’s a weird idea, we did not get too many takers. I guess we averaged about 12 people each night.
The idea came from where? It’s hard to tell. There was a prof where I did my BA an MA who had her students read Paradise Lost out loud, together, in one sitting. Then in seminary, I had a great prof, Joe Dongell, who had us read Mark aloud, but we did it alone. I guess Jessica and I got to talking about those assignments, and maybe we should read Scripture aloud together. So we did Mark about a month ago, with 5 people. We knew we were on to something. As we talked some more, Dro (Peter White), Maggie, Meg and I am not sure who all else started buzzing about the idea of Psalms. So we set a time and did it.
It was wonderful. Community is not built because some people happen to know Christ and then get together socially. It I built when people are formed together by Christ, in Christ. But I digress.
Monday night at Meg’s house, the first night. Each of us seemed to have some way the Psalms connected with us personally and corporately. Jason read Psalm 13, and it seemed like that summed him up, seemed like a summary of all the text messages he has ever sent me.
Tuesday night at Mona 2’s house. What a cool house. And what deep devotion to 2 Monas have to Scripture. We all just basked in the Word.
Wednesday night, at the Church. Psalms took the place of the prayer meeting, which makes sense because the Psalms are prayer. Two guys looking for the Word came. They heard it, but maybe not like they expected.
Thursday night, my house. Awesome. Big crowd. Good dinner (thanks, Laura!) Amazing stuff. My man Lew came with his boy Seth and friend Sam. Lew has a great community up in Cincy, and we have long wanted to connect. Then, Michael, a youth from the community, maybe 12, sat and read with us. Wanted to read first, and belted out Psalm 90.
Friday night, Jessica and Laura’s house. Another good crowd, another good dinner. And the biggest chunk of Psalms, 45. Lots of people around the room, lots of voices. And when we got to Psalm 136, and Abigail had people respond with the chorus, “His love endures forever.” I was holding Jazmen, she was just about asleep and then she popped up. I asked her if she heard. Yes, she said. “God loves you, all the time.” She just smiled.
We’ll do it again. I think we’re going to do something ridiculous. I realized that you can read the New Testament through in 13 weeks, giving 2 ½ hours per week. So I think we’ll try to do that one time through, and see if we want to keep on, doing the NT four times a year.
