I have the joy of reading from the Psalms every day. For a long time now I have committed to reading through the Psalms and Proverbs every month in addition to my other Bible reading. The Psalms give us a good grounding in our personal experiences and feelings.
In our day people are looking for experience over rationalism. Scientific knowledge has lost its pervasive hold over our western culture. Experience, even to the point of mysticism, has gained significance in people's minds. To a great extent thinking has given way to feeling. It was natural that the pendulum would swing, but there are inherent dangers. We still must hold on to objective truth and of course our feelings can greatly mislead us. But, the Psalms provide us with a Biblical model of how to properly balance heart and mind. The Psalmists constantly bring the intensity of their feelings and invite us to experience along with them, never surrendering to mindless emotion. The Psalmists always bring their feelings in the context of God's revealed character and will.
We also see the importance of our experiencing both highs and lows in emotions and feelings in the context of objective truth. This is highlighted in Psalms 42 and 43. This chorus shows up three times in these two Psalms:
"Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God."
Here we find a song written out of an experience of an intense sadness of heart. In fact, it is a psalm composed by someone in the midst of deepest depression. But when we study the whole of these two Psalms, we see that in this man's experience, depression was not the enemy of spirituality. But rather, paradoxically, it was the seed or catalyst of spiritual growth and development.
Our worship is not all joy, nor should it be. We see that in the reading of the Psalms. There are songs of the night and songs of the day. When there are songs of the night, joy comes in the morning. We can learn much about how we should worship in the midst of our own experiences in this great song book. mjm
