I stood at the beginning of our gathering together on Sunday morning to read Psalm 94. I said that I really wished there were some of these Psalms that we could bypass. Angry Psalms, Whinging Psalms…Psalms that talk of a vengeful God that is called on to wreak havoc on the enemies and smite them mightily.
Then I read the Psalm. Not for the first time either. I’d read it probably five times during the week – each time thinking ‘should I read this on Sunday’?
But I did. And as I read, I discovered verses in there that weren’t there earlier in the week. Hey, they weren’t even there earlier that morning.
What had changed?
Well, I was reading them ‘among the congregation’.
When I hit verse 19 (‘When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul’) I did a double take. I read it twice. Was it there every other time I read this Psalm during the week? Surely. Thing is, the the previous five times I’d read it alone. Sera McCulloch* wasn’t there. And as I read this verse, I thought ‘this is for you, woman’.
When I read verse 17 (“If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon had lived in the land of silence”), someone else from around the table came to mind.
Verse 18 did the same.
All of a sudden, Psalm 94 had come alive for me. And why? Had those verses been added to my Bible miraculously at 9:30am? Nope. But what had changed, was proclaiming it ‘in the company of the saints’.
Some of these Psalms are to restore our soul beside still waters. Many more are to bring that same assurance in the assembly, around people…where life happens. That’s what made sense of the Psalm for me: God’s children and what was going on in their lives.
Read His Word on your own, sure. Never stop that. And let’s never stop reading his Word together for the assurance, comfort, encouragement, consolation, correction and guidance of the body of Christ either.
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*Sera, if I had the ability to turn to you at that point (when I re-read it) and say, ‘this verse is for you’, I would have. Then I would have fallen down in a blubbering mess.