“The psalms have been the prayer book for the people of God for thousands of years. The psalms help us to pray about wide-ranging concerns: matters of social justice and personal piety, national crises and congregational praise, world missions and quiet meditation.
When we pray about these things that matter to God and have mattered to God’s people across generations and around the world, we experience a connection that develops our relationship with and trust in God as well as a connection to God’s people of all times and places.”
—Michael Hoogeboom, “Praying the Psalms,” © March 2009, ReformedWorship.org, CC BY-NC-SA.
It’s been five hundred years since the Protestant Reformation, a good time to remember the new ways of singing the psalms in the sixteenth century that now, however, seem very old. But the psalms are so much older! The oldest psalm, Psalm 90, which we sing as “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” was probably written by Moses.
There’s a word used to indicate the practice of singing two different songs at the same time. The musicological term is quodlibet. My teenage children call it a “mash-up.” Sometimes melodies or texts are superimposed over one another to demonstrate the musical skills of a composer. Other times it might be done simply for the fun of it.
Let’s face it: Advent has been hijacked. Most people, including many Christians, consider Black Friday to be the beginning of the Christmas season. But long before the crush of holiday shopping at the end of November, Christmas lights festoon our streets and malls and the sound of Christmas jingles is inescapable.
More Psalms and Psalmody Resources
Lessons I Learned from Singing the Psalms
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