Songs to Live by

This is an exploration of the Book of Psalms, with an added section devoted to some of the principles of Christian worship. Have you ever wondered about the strangeness of the poetic structure of the Psalms? And what about those terrible cursing Psalms? Why is this collection of ancient songs so popular? How should they be understood, and what meaning can they have for us who live some 3000 years after their original composition? Those questions and others like them are answered in these pages. Here too you will find an exploration of one of the most fascinating features of the Psalms - those many places where the voice of a prophetic suddenly interrupts the prophetic flow, sometimes changing the direction of the Psalm entirely. Another section is devoted to discovering the wonderfully different poetic structure used by the psalmist, which makes Hebrew poetry alone in the world translatable into any language and culture. The book climaxes with a section on the prophetic and inspired quality that should characterize true Christian worship, lifting it from the mundane to the heavenly, bringing each worshiper to the very throne of God. Anyone who mines the treasures that lie buried, some shallow, some deep, in the Psalms will indeed find in these ancient songs something to enrich every part of life.