Writing your own psalm:
This week we are looking at the life of King David. David's life is riddled with highs and lows...life and death, sorry and joy, sin and praise, but in both the good times and bad we get a picture of who David was before God. We see how his relationship to God was personal, intimate, and at times challenging and painful. Can anyone relate? One thing we know about David was that he was a psalmist...a writer of poetry and music. These Hebrew poems were written for singing, praising, and praying to God, David's Heavenly Father and King. What if you were to write your own psalm? Would it be a song of praise, of lament, of repentance and joy? We challenge you to try. Even if you don't consider yourself a writer, just write from your heart. Boil down your experiences, feelings, and thoughts until you get to the foundation of your beliefs and pour them out to God, your Heavenly Father and King.
Step One: Spend
time in prayer contemplating what is weighing on your heart. Identify what your
burden, joy or passion is that needs expressing.
Step Two: Praise
God for who He is, thank him for what he has done, expressing fear or doubt. Praise
for a specific blessing, remembering a special event, confession, etc.
Step Three: Make
it Personal. Use “I, me and my”.
Step Four: Use
Descriptive Language. Try to say a lot
without using a large number of words.
Use adjectives such as awesome, majestic, incredible...
Step Five: Try writing
like the Hebrews…(ok this should be fun, right?). The psalmists used parallelism
to express themselves in Psalms (do a web search to read about the types of parallelism in Psalms or see WU David Handout for more info)
Happy Writing!
Jena M.
