Introduction
I grew up reading Psalms. My father made me read one in the morning and another one in the evening during our family prayer time. I also learned to recite some of them by heart. After living for half a century around the globe experiencing life in various ways, I still find in psalms the best expression of my own perceptions of life -- the feelings and thoughts hidden deep down in my own heart. I am grateful to my parents for making me read them in my childhood.
I am presenting a few of my own meditations on some of the psalms in these pages. I am relating the context in which the psalms were written to our own context in the modern world. This is an attempt to have a closer look at our own life here and now with the help of psalms, the invaluable pearls of wisdom that we have inherited from our ancestors.
In psalms I see the deepest feelings and thoughts of human beings. The deepest feelings expressed here are common across all people irrespective of religious or cultural differences. Therefore, I invite all those who possess an open mind to read these meditations.
Available to us as one of the books in the Bible, the Psalms, is a collection of poems and songs. They were written by numerous poets in the Middle East during a period of several centuries. A good part of mankind has sung and meditated upon them since then.
The deepest of human feelings and emotions, the most profound of insights, and the most tragic and joyous of human experiences have been expressed by poetry and music. Throughout the psalms we see such an expression of mankind’s hopes, its despairs, its joys, and its sorrows. We are able to witness here how real human beings face the real challenges of life. The psalms take us beyond creeds and rituals into the heartland of human experience. There we see how people experienced life, and how they interpreted these experiences using the concepts and world-views buried deep down in their subconscious minds.
Most of the psalms were originally written for liturgical worship. They follow certain literary formats. A Hymn is a song of praise, in which a community is urged to joyfully sing. A Thanksgiving Psalm is a song of praise acknowledging the Lord as the rescuer of the psalmist from a desperate situation. Another type of psalm is that of the “lament”. The other psalms, however, cannot be neatly classified like this.
The language of the Psalms is that of the poet-- metaphorical and symbolic. The comprehension of psalms, therefore, requires that one be able to decode metaphors. One needs to be able to distinguish between a simile and a metaphor. One also needs to be able to distinguish between a metaphor that is explicit and one that is implicit.
The world appears mostly as a Kingdom ruled by God, the king of kings. The world belongs to God like a kingdom belongs to its king or like a farm belongs to its farmer. The presence of God as king makes the world function as one organized system. We human beings have a special place in the world—we represent God here.
Life is seen mostly as an adventure trip with God. It is like a pilgrimage—a journey to a holy place. Life is not a recreational trip for the sole purpose of enjoyment. It is an adventure trip which lets us challenge ourselves and learn. Hope and pray that this book will help every reader see life as an adventure trip with God.
John D. Kunnathu,
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