Honest Speech - Reading the Psalms

This summer I am studying the Psalms.  Reading Walter Brueggemann, Glenn Pemberton and Eugene Peterson, I quickly realized how unfamiliar the text was to me. I have read bits and pieces of the Psalms and knew they are understood as the songbook of Israel; I knew they are wisdom literature and I knew  they were poetic in the original Hebrew. But like English poetry, their cadence and content was challenging for me.

So, I decided I wanted to try to simply read through the Psalms, just to gain some familiarity with the language, like listening to Spanish radio helps me recognize forgotten vocabulary. I hoped I would notice repeated words and phrases, and begin to understand this new language. If I could get past the decoding stage of reading, I could begin to understand what the writers were saying.

Not surprisingly, Google offers lots of suggestions for reading the Psalms. There are 150 Psalms so reading 5 each day will take a reader through the Psalter in 30 days.One way to do that is to read the psalm for that date, e.g. today is June 22, so begin with Psalm 22, and then read every thirtieth Psalm, e.g. Psalm 52, 82, 112, 142. Repeat the math the next day.

But the Psalms are so varied that a numerical reading felt too random to me, so I chose a reading plan organized around themes.

Reaching the end of the plan, I realized that, there is a nuance between reading the Psalms in 30 days and reading the Psalms for 30 days. I had read just under 2/3 of the Psalter. Of the 61 psalms the themed reading plan did not include, more than half (34) were lament psalms. It struck me then how reluctant we are to use honest speech with God.

While Brueggemann uses the categories of orientation, disorientation and new orientation to identify different Psalms, Pemberton categorizes Psalms into praise, thanksgiving, lament and "other", identifying a full 60 lament Psalms in the Psalter. If we took away a third of our language, I don't think we'd be able to communicate well. Unless we soak ourselves in the Scriptures that are hard - the laments and even the violent and bloodthirsty passages, we risk thinking God only inhabits one part of our lives, and when we are hurting the most, we won't have the language to speak to God, and when we are in the darkest places and passages of our lives, we won't have the imagination to believe God is there with us.

I have built a reading plan that  takes a reader through the Psalter, more or less using the following categories.Some Psalms fit more than one category but for my purposes, they are included only once in the readings. I hope you'll spend some time with the Psalms and tell me whether this is helpful, or share how you approach the Psalter.

Individual Prayers for Help	Individual Songs of Thanksgiving
Communal Prayers for Help	Communal Songs of Thanksgiving
Hymns of Praise	Royal Psalms
Creation Psalms	Trust Psalms
Enthronement Psalms	Acrostic Psalms
Songs of Zion	Festival Psalms
Liturgies	Historical Psalms
Instructional Psalms Day 1 3 4 5 6 7 Day 2 13 17 22 26 28 Day 3 31 35 36 38 39 Day 4 42 43 51 54 55 Day 5 56 58 59 61 64 Day 6 69 70 71 77 86 Day 7 88 94 102 109 120 Day 8 130 140 141 142 143 Day 9 44 60 67 74 79 Day 10 80 83 108 123 126 Day 11 137 33 65 68 98 Day 12 100 103 113 114 117 Day 13 135 146 147 148 149 Day 14 150 8 19 104 139 Day 15 47 93 96 97 99 Day 16 46 48 76 84 87 Day 17 122 2 12 15 24 Day 18 50 81 82 85 91 Day 19 95 107 115 118 121 Day 20 124 129 132 134 136 Day 21 1 14 41 49 53 Day 22 62 73 90 127 128 Day 23 133 30 32 40 57 Day 24 66 92 116 138 66 Day 25 75 18 20 21 45 Day 26 72 89 101 110 144 Day 27 11 16 23 27 52 Day 28 63 125 131 9 10 Day 29 25 34 37 111 112 Day 30 119 145 78 105 106