July 28, 2014
What's your favorite psalm, and why?
hit the cymbals!
In an instructional video, Neil Percy, lead percussionist for the London Symphony Orchestra, demonstrates the proper technique for holding cymbals to generate the the loudest noise possible. He begins by holding the cymbals vertically just below his waist. He clashes them together while moving them skyward. Then he ends with both hands extended over his head, the cymbals reverberating joyfully in the air above him. The biggest strokes on the cymbals, he says, might be used in a symphony “[at] the heights of a crescendo, or the combination of a really big stream of notes.”
history’s steady tune
George Jellinek, former host of The Vocal Scene radio program, says “the history of a people is found in its songs.” Years ago, music was a crucial way for slaves in the US to recount their stories, and music was central to the way the Civil Rights movement retold its vision. If you want to know a culture or its people, you have to know the music they used to pass along their stories. This is how the people in ancient Israel used the Psalms—their stories and prayers helped them to remember God, particularly in the long years when God was silent.
prayer for the sheep
The Psalms are diverse prayers. The Psalter (the name for all the Psalms collected together) is a prayer and song book. Whatever we learn from a psalm, whatever questions raised or answers given—we must never forget that it is first a prayer. It contains intimate words spoken to God.
Psalms have been prayed to God for thousands of years. Israel prayed…
