Remember that one central focus of praying the Psalms is that it is not just PERSONAL, but corporate--these are OUR prayers, which means there are times we resonate with what is being said and times we don't. But even in times when we don't, we can IMAGINE how someone somewhere in the global Church may resonate with it given the contingencies of their lives. So we pray FOR and WITH them when we utter a psalm--they are at least intercessory when they don't seem personal.
In one of today's psalms, the writer pens: "I am as useless as a broken pot." You may not feel that way at all today, but certainly you can imagine how the global Church can feel that way in the light of being discounted from culture/power structures around us. So we enter the prayer...imagining being a broken pot that cannot do what it was designed to do...there is loss and a sense of hopelessness...yet, the psalmist continues with the sense that God will fix this eventually: "Blessed be the LORD! for he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city."
The Psalms prayed take us into another dimension of prayer. One that both touches us personally (at times) and springboards us into the global mind of Christ's Church with effective intercession that only eternity will tell of its true fruit.
This is just another way (to refer back to our conversation yesterday) that we enter community and communion with the saints...it is not earthy enough / incarnational enough in the long run (a nod to the need articulated yesterday) but I think it is the foundation for that kind of community.
I have a cousin in New York that I have only known casually over the years, but since moving here we have been more intentional about connecting with her. Why? She's family. The familial bond pushes me towards her, not just my ache for community. What should push us towards each other is that we are members of one another metaphysically--one body, one faith, one baptism, we worship one God and Father of us all...we pray together, even when we are in different places...THIS is the foundation for community, not ache. And as we pursue it (which is where the convo for yesterday really begins) we pursuing it and what does that pursuit look like - we obliterate the ache as a byproduct, not as the goal.