Kindred Spirits

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think,” says Anne in one of her reflections in L.M. Montgomery’s famed series. “It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

Anne is one of literature’s heroines whose common desire—to be known and understood by another in a deep way—is shared by many the world over.  One biblical writer in particular seems to understand and articulate an immense array of human emotion, so much so that he has served as kindred spirit to many for millennia.  His name?  David.  His heart, in bold and living color, is written all over the book of Psalms.

I was walking through a train once, offering Gospel pamphlets to the riders when I met a Latino gentleman, his Spanish Bible opened to the Hebrew psalter.  We talked a bit in Spanish, then in English—when the man told me he found time to read the Psalms each day.  Interestingly, this gentleman did not have a testimony of conversion, but the words of David of old had resonated with him. Each evening, he said, he found Psalm reading the best of ways encourage to his heart.

How many believers, encountering difficulties along life's path, do not join in echoing the psalmist's praise in Psalm 119:150--“This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me"?

Hebrew children of old grew up singing the Psalms, so that many of the Psalter’s texts were memorized.  On the way to Jerusalem, as families trudged up one ascent and then another, they joined in sacred harmony as they joyously offered those “Songs of Degrees” to the Lord. 

Who has not been stilled by the message of Psalm 23 at a funeral? 

Whose heart has not been awakened who mused upon the lines of Psalm 119? 

Who has not cried out in fresh wonderment at the omniscience of God when confronted with the truths of Psalm 139?

Recently, as I have traversed the Psalms, my study technique has altered slightly from previous excursions through the book.  This time, I’ve been paraphrasing paragraphs from my daily reading. 

“A text without a context is a pretext,” my husband often reminds me.  And I’ve found the book of Psalms to be no exception.  Paging through a Bible I’ve owned since I was in eighth grade, one highlighted text after another comes to light.  Promises, underscored and asterisked, remind of other moments when this book’s verses have joyed my heart.  They speak of moments buoyed into blissful encouragement by salient thoughts from this magnificent masterpiece. 

This time through, however, I notice a deficiency crying out at me:  those promises, those nuggets of hope—I’ve not always placed in their proper context.  Resultantly, some powerful connections from the full, rich benefit of the context I lost.  But paragraph paraphrasing is changing all that. 

The realization hit me first when I met with Psalm 43.  The entire psalm is one paragraph, which reads,

Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. For thou art the God of my strength: why dost hou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?  O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.  Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God.  Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

Because I came to Christ as a child, reading the Psalms did not always mete out for me what it does today.  There was a time when I did not understand the pain of rejection.  Likewise, reading God’s Word without a focus on context caused me to miss a great number of contextual promises and attributes of God that should have prepared me for times of spiritual wilderness which would follow, at various junctures in life, when it felt that my whole world had turned upside down.

In one of her adventures, Anne Shirley laments, “It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”

I couldn’t agree more heartily. 

As a child, I found myself discarding some of David’s words—not that I didn’t believe them; I simply hadn’t lived them.  To me, some of the verses in a psalm such as the one above, were sad, hollow-sounding timpani that never touched my actual reality.  But today, having experienced my own soul pain, such words resonate, unlike they ever did before.  Reading them is like sitting in at the concert of a perfectly harmonized group playing Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” one of the saddest and most gripping pieces of music I’ve ever heard.  

Reading Psalm 43 now, I don’t discard words I don’t understand, for I fully connect with the realization that David felt cast off by God.  I’ve lived long enough to understand the depth of wounding a soul can endure, the mourning that can happen because an enemy oppresses. 

Such reality makes the faith-infused prayer of the psalmist that much more powerful.  Unable to perceive life’s verities accurately, in the midst of sorrow of heart, he prays, “Send out Thy light and Thy truth:  let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill . . . then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy.”

In the context of such heartache, he promises—I will praise God, the health of my countenance. 

Beautifully, God’s direction always leads us to Himself.

Gently, He leads us to worship Him.  There, gazing afresh at our Perfect Sacrifice, He invites us to offer ourselves anew to Him. In so doing, He shows us His joy, clearly highlighting for us His truth and directing us with His light.  And, because of His continued faithfulness, we can joy, glorifying Him for every source of pain that has caused us ever to cry out to this God we so desperately need.

Gripped, then, by these magnificent promises, I can say, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”

It’s not a nice idea; it’s a command.  It’s not a good notion; it’s a godly example.  It’s not just a spiritual thought.  It’s a decision made by the soul of one yet in the midst of trial. 

Still.

To.

Praise.

Him. 

In the context of such a psalm’s powerful promises, my eyes become riveted to my Hope, my Stay, my Anchor--my precious Jesus.

What a privilege that God should inspire for us a Book recording such depth and breadth of human emotion, all the while leading us to Him!   

May we study these Psalms in context, sing them with understanding, and worship our God in prayer and praise as we echo the thoughts of a kindred spirit, David, a man after God’s own heart.