The psalms are where our faith heritage has gone for millennia to learn to pray, kind of like a “school for prayer.” Now, many of us may be too far removed from our earliest days of education to remember what school for the basics was really like. Unlike our college classes, and even more so than our high school curriculum, in elementary school, we learned not through theory or lecture, but by repeated practice.
For instance, our twins, who are in elementary school right now, are learning math not by talking about math at length, but by doing math, and performing similar problems over and over again. Likewise, they are continuing to learn to read, not by talking about reading, but by attempting to read, fumbling through at times, but slowly, after many repetitions, reading with fluency and comprehension. They are learning the basics through repeated practice.
Now, there are essential theories that undergird the math that the twins practice and there are undoubtedly crucial systems that give shape to the words and sentences they practice reading, but the theories and the systems aren’t what you major on in elementary school. I doubt either Lily or Cohen could tell you why they are learning math and reading the way they are, but I know their teachers are familiar with the bigger picture, the doctrines that make math, math and reading, reading. I also know that their teachers teach from within these limitations and structures, ensuring the students will, one day, be able to both recognize the bigger picture and function well within a larger world. In this way, their elementary education is preparing them not to surpass what they are learning—as if they will no longer need math or reading--but instead, move deeper into a much bigger world built on what they are learning.
The psalms are similar, an elementary school of prayer. They teach us the basics of being a person of prayer among a people of prayer by repeated practice. Likewise, the psalms, as teachers, are well aware of the essential theories and critical systems that undergird what they are teaching and prepare us for a life as we grow up. As Donald Whitney once noted, “the Psalms are like a little Bible. Every doctrine in the Bible is there: either in the bud or in flower, but they are all there.” And much like what we learned in elementary school (and unlike some of the other stuff we learned after!), we will actually put what we learn from the psalms into practice nearly every day of our adult lives.
So, if we are to go to school in the psalms, we need to approach them as an elementary course, recognizing that they are given to us not to dissect but to repeat; to learn prayer by praying…these specific prayers. Depth will come as you move into the basics, for these prayers are taught to us within something larger than themselves: the entire story of God’s speaking and saving. And like an elementary child learning math or to read, we need not major on the systems undergirding our daily learning, but we do need to submit to the wisdom of the teacher. And, as Eugene Peterson reminds,
“This canonical condition [the Psalms as a part of the whole Bible] means that in the life of faith we don’t make up original prayers that suit our private spiritual genius. Prayer is not an original language, but received language.
A millennium’s experience of grace and judgment, creation and chaos, guilt and salvation, rebellion and obedience shapes the prayers that are the Psalms. When we pray the Psalms, and are trained in prayer by them, we enter into this centuries-long experience of being a people of God.”
Let’s go to school! Start praying with your faith family and others through the Psalms in a cyclical rhythm: repeating every 30, 60, or 75 days. Chose a tempo you can be consistent with, then with the humility and curiosity of children, learn the basics of prayer in the Psalms, not the theory of it, so that you can live well, and rightly, in a bigger world built on what you pray.