Here we are being S.A.D. together. Trying to address our spiritual affective disorder and connect more to the divine and our neighbor. For upon that hang all the law and the prophets.

While Amos states that January is his winter blahs… it’s good to note that winter blahs can happen in February. That’s my month. I don’t like it. The best thing about February is that it’s short and it ends on Kate’s birthday. For Kate, it’s March. Maybe some of you don’t get the blahs at all, and you are truly blessed. Yet any time is a good time to pray, so if you need to ignore the blah of it all, listen for the spiritual practices.

Last week, we gave out stickers, and encouraged you in whatever way and at any given time to think about the phrase, “Arise! Shine! For your light has come…” from Isaiah 60:1. Upon waking. When you brush your teeth. Sometime. A minute or less of spiritual practice.

Today we turn to the Psalms. Right in the middle of the Hebrew Scriptures, there’s a songbook. A hymnal, if you will. The longest book of the Bible is a collection of Psalms. The Psalms were the playlist of our ancestors in faith. These songs were used for all sorts of occasions and contain every sort of feeling.

Now, I know spiritual disciplines can be guilt-inducing. Just one more thing to do. Even I have a sense of guilt that I should be doing more. Yet one of the first spiritual practices I actually completed was praying through the Psalms, and I was fascinated by what I found there.

Of course, there were things one would expect. Songs of praise and worship.
Psalm 8: “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Psalm 100: “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.”
Psalm 150: “Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary… Praise him for his mighty acts… Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

My personal favorite is Psalm 19: “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the skies proclaim his handiwork.” It ends with, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” that many pastors pray before preaching. I pray that before writing, so it’s baked in there.

There are Psalms of comfort too. Psalm 91, with God as refuge and shield. Psalm 46, God as an ever-present help. Psalm 34, God near to the brokenhearted. They offer reassurance, peace, and deliverance from fear, especially in times of suffering, loss, or distress, reminding us of God’s enduring love, protection, and faithfulness. The most famous of these, of course, is Psalm 23.

Here’s a tangent. I’m usually all for translational accuracy. It’s why I like the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, the NRSVUE for short. Yet when we read Psalm 23 in our pew Bibles on page XX, we get the line, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley…”

Wait. What? No, I don’t.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
That’s the valley I walk through.

Darkest valleys I can handle with a flashlight, or whatever’s on my phone. But the valley of the shadow of death requires a bigger, brighter light. A lamp unto my feet. The light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. I need the light of the world, the desire of the nations, Jesus Christ himself! That’s the valley I walk through. Okay. Tangent over.

Yet there’s also a lot in the Psalms that surprises me.

There are feelings of revenge. The first three Psalms talk about how the wicked are bad, how those who delight in the law of the Lord are on the right path. God laughs at the nations who oppose the Lord. “How many are rising against me,” one psalmist cries, “but the Lord is a shield around me.” These emotions surprise me.

Maybe you’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t be angry with God. Well, the Psalms have no problem with anger.
Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”
Psalm 22, famously quoted by Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Psalm 44 accuses God of being asleep or rejecting God’s people: “Awake! Why do you sleep, O Lord?”
Psalm 69 cries out in deep distress: “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.”

The psalmists don’t shy away from letting their anger, grief, and sense of abandonment be known.

If you’ve had the feeling, you can find it in the Psalms. Praying one Psalm a day is a good spiritual discipline to consider. It was the first spiritual discipline I completed. These are short, punchy, and fun to discover. And there are 150 of them. If you didn’t like or understand the one you just read, don’t worry. Another one is coming. Plus the sense of accomplishment when you reach the end. It’s pretty cool.

Today’s Psalm tells us that “God put a new song in my mouth.”

Oh. Yeah. Music. Psalms are songs.

On our annual trip to the synagogue, we hear the Psalms sung in Hebrew. The cantor is amazing. A voice like an angel. Psalms are songs. And songs have music and melody. We don’t understand a lick of the language, as it’s mostly in Hebrew. But we love the vibe. I love going to that worship each year with our confirmation class. That’s Friday, February 6^th for those interested.

Music is everywhere. All creation is singing. Birds are on every continent. And those guys are loud. Always chirping. It took me until college to realize that a certain chirping sound I thought was a bird was actually a squirrel. I know this because there was a tree outside my freshman dorm where one squirrel liked to sit and chirp at me. At sunrise.

When we say that heaven and earth and singing, I’m saying literally. The universe hums.

My guitar teacher, Bud, talked about radio satellites picking up on a hum. Scientists thought it was static, but it turns out it was the universe making that noise. In 2003, scientists found that disturbances, pressure waves, in the hot gas around a black hole behave like extremely low-frequency waves, far below what humans can hear. Scientists took those waves and shifted them up more than 57 octaves so we could hear them. The resulting tones have been described as eerie, like a deep cosmic rumble.

If the universe were a guitar, this black hole would be strumming a B-flat so deep it takes ten million years to complete a single vibration.[1] That’s pretty cool!

Psalm 19 was right: “The heavens are telling the glory of God… There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

Music soothes the savage beast. I keep music on as much as I can. I listened to almost 70,000 minutes of music last year on Spotify alone. That doesn’t even count the radio or my CD collection. I love music, and it remains a mystery to me.

Musicians are magicians. Cathy and the Gathering band can play minutes of music, and I can’t dial a phone number correctly on the first try. Melody, harmony, counter-melody. Kurt Cobain once wrote a joke song called “Verse Chorus Verse,” like he was bored with the whole enterprise. I wish I could write one song as good as his worst song.

I could talk about music all day. But I’d rather hear from you. What are some favorite songs and aritsts?

Music is universal.

I didn’t have many dates in high school. But one coffee date told me she didn’t listen to music, and I thought, There will be no second date.

There are so many studies about music. Its healing properties. Its benefit to our spirit. When we sing together, not only do our harmonies line up, but so do our breathing and our heart rates.[2] Sometimes, some of the last pieces of personality emerge in memory wards when patients hear the music they love.[3]

Music is magic. It can draw us out of the desolate pit, out of the miry bog. And all of creation is singing.

Someone who struggled with depression once told me about the morning they finally got properly medicated. They woke up and thought a bird was in the house. While doing laundry or grabbing a snack, they kept hearing a sound. They searched the room until they realized they were whistling. They were the bird. The call was coming from inside their own mouth. They couldn’t remember the last time they had simply been whistling.

May God put a new song in your mouth. May you take time to whistle this week. Maybe start reading through the Psalms, if you’re feeling dangerous. Spend time with a favorite artist or go through an artist’s whole catalogue. Todd Bauer recently did a Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones discography. Another friend is going through Joni Mitchell’s whole catalogue. Whatever brightens your soul. Whatever part never fails to give you goosebumps, go listen to that. For our lives have a soundtrack. The hymns, the pop songs, the movie scores we carry with us. They speak directly to our souls.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Lee Mohon, “New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix,” NASA.gov, May 4, 2022, https://www.nasa.gov/universe/new-nasa-black-hole-sonifications-with-a-remix/

[2] Björn Vickhoff et al., “Music structure determines heart rate variability of singers,” Frontiers in Psychology (2013), https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00334/full ee also Vera Müller and Ulman Lindenberger, “Heart Rate Variability Synchronizes When Non-experts Vocalize Together,” Frontiers in Psychology (2011), accessed via PMC.

[3] Music for Alzheimer’s: Benefits, Risks, and Techniques,” Healthline, accessed Dec. 30, 2025, https://www.healthline.com/health/alzheimers/music-for-alzheimers