Feels like a storm is gathering these days, doesn’t it? 

I woke with a taut, anxious mind. I was up in the middle of the night and saw the ratcheting red headlines about the coronavirus. They played in my head as I tried to sleep again, wondering who among those I love might be vulnerable and how it all might affect our families, our church filled with elderly people, our freedom to travel to those we love. 

In the blue dawn light, chill and silent, I felt summoned to pray. I was aware of fear blossoming in my mind, growing also in the outer world like a swift, gathering cloud. I felt the brooding threat of it shadowing my eyes. But… pray. Pray. So I did. And like beams of light razoring through storm, my mind was gently pierced by line after line from the Psalms I have known and read throughout my adult life:

Trust in the Lord and do good.
The poor looked to him and were radiant.
The Lord my God is my strength and my song.
When I am afraid I will trust in you.

Abruptly, I was aware of the way that those songs of trust and desire, yearning and desperation sung by the faithful through countless generations, were telling me a story larger and realer than that of the headlines. 

‘The Lord is near to the brokenhearted’
’The Lord is the one who holds your hand.’
’The Lord is a refuge to those who love him.’

All the old truths gathered at the door of my thought. Things that are true, not as headlines are briefly, gaudily true, but as mountains are true; ancient, rooted, the granite stuff of which the very world is made. And I knew a deep urgency, a conviction that as the days become dark and difficult, I must cling to the older and ancient truths of Scripture, trusting that they tell a story larger than that told by the headlines. I decided I wanted to write about it here, to cultivate confidence in the unchanging goodness of God.

Then I went downstairs and discovered that my house had been broken into overnight.

And for a few hours, I forgot the Psalms. Every downstairs drawer in our home was open, a cigarette on the floor, my husband’s backpack gone. Nothing too valuable stolen, no real harm done, but oh, the seize of my breath, the tightness of my heart at thought of a stranger roaming my home, my safe place, in the darkness, so close to my little ones. My mind became it’s own little newsroom filled with headlines and ‘what ifs?’ in panicked red. ‘This is your nightmare, isn’t it?’ said my husband, knowing the way my particular brand of OCD works. And it is. Even though I know with profound gratitude that we are safe and unharmed, to have a stranger break into the house is one of my obsessive anxieties.

And the headlines of my fear flashed again and again across my brain. I sat down as we waited for the police to call, trying to get my breath and felt that the rumour of disaster was outside me, roaming the world, and within me, disturbing the peace of my inmost heart. I sat in the blue chair by my window and tried to pray…

Be still and know that I am God.
The Lord is my strength and my song.
The Lord is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

The old, holy words broke again, like sharp, razored light through the shadow of fear, the rumour of trouble. Brief lines but pithy and potent with truth. I was struck by the way the lines from those Psalms felt like headlines. Those phrases were struck into being by raw and mighty emotion. They were made on the way - to battle, to hiding, to praise, to need - and so are in their way words of the eternal human now, in all its desperation and desire and fear. They echo with all the immediacy and anguish of the headlines that flash across my screen. But they operate very differently upon me.

Psalms or headlines. They are two kinds of language. One is the language of the instant, immediate panic, words that provoke uncontained, raw emotion by the sheer blast of disastrous information in news headings and the dispatches of our own fear. Headlines aren’t tethered to history or framed by story or nuanced by a larger truth. They are, in a way, a language of chaos, provoking but never solving the emotion they instigate.

But Psalms, they are a language of trust. For though they too express and proclaim our most desperate emotion, they frame and interpret it within the structures of faith, hope, and love. The Psalms hum with the highest and lowest the human heart can feel. They give us permission to rail and weep, to yearn and grieve. But that raw feeling is woven into music because it sits within the forms made by the larger story of God’s creativity, his faithfulness, his love. The Psalms witness to our origin - made for joy, formed by love - and our end - all that is lost reclaimed, all that was broken restored. Psalms are a music made by story; it is narrative that frames and shapes the anguished words of human need into music, one sung throughout the ages by those who tried God and found him true.

Trust in the Lord.
He is our refuge.
He heals the brokenhearted.
God is a stronghold to those who trust in him.
The Lord is our helper.

I began to sing those Psalms, slowly in my own heart, throughout the day. I allowed them to meet and wrestle with the headlines both of the news and my own too vivid imagination as I considered the coming night and all the fears I’d have to face. I whispered them as prayers when adrenaline left my hands shaking. I sang them within myself as a way of keeping my courage up and my hands strong to comfort the baby and call a friend and keep it together around Lilian. And as I sang, gradually, in occasional bright glimpses, I remembered where I stood in the larger story of the world: beloved of God, redeemed, called to live by faith in a love that is transforming and defeating all evil. Even pandemic viruses. Even OCD (and the upsets that set it raging).

It’s hard work, though, to sing. Hard to turn my eyes from the gaudiness of constantly updated alarm to the old, quiet songs of faith. And so, I’m returning at the end of this day to the impulse that was like a fire in me in the early morning. In these times of worry and fear, we need to sing the Psalms often, aloud, and in fellowship. We need to walk through our days with minds formed by hope, not by the latest headline. We need to remember with will and courage, the words of Scripture and poem, story and song that will keep us steadfast in our belief in God’s goodness, presence, and grace. We need to repeat the story day after day, remember the signs like Jill in Narnia.

And we need to do it together. One of the dreadful things about this illness is the way it drives us toward isolation. So I want to make my little online rooms a place where we can come together to say the Psalms, the ancient ones of Scripture, the new ones of poetry. The storm may be gathering, but friends, I believe we have the capacity to choose which language we will live by; that of chaos, or that of trust. Headlines or Psalms, I think we can choose.

So here’s my commitment to you. As often as I can (and far more often than I have been!), I will read aloud each day a passage from the Psalms and a poem of hope or trust or courage. You can see those videos on Instagram or Facebook. I’ve been doing the poetry here and there anyway, but I think we need the words of the Psalms as well, and I think we need to sing and say them together. Also. I have another idea brewing, a way to help us all draw together round the pursuit of beauty even in the darkness. Keep an eye out here because I’m going to talk about it soon. For now, here’s the first Psalm and poem (recorded hastily as the babies began to squall in the background…):