Prayer is an Act of Memory
Psalm 116
“Prayer is an act of memory” (Eugene Peterson).
For most of my life, I have treated the psalms as a collection of quotes, kind of like a Google Search for encouraging and well said sayings. Context was irrelevant. Each line was a new thought.
The fifteenth verse of Psalm 116 is a prime example. As a pastor, I speak at many funerals, and I am always looking for good Bible verses to “use” in a funeral service. Verse 15 is one of these “good use” verses: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” Why is the death of the saints precious to the Lord? Because the Lord knows what happens to the saints when they die. They lay this mortal body down and step into the presence of the Most High God. This is precious to the Lord.
As they say in seminary, that’ll preach.
There’s only one problem: that is not the point of Psalm 116.
This is a prime example and reminder to me that the psalms must be prayed daily, consecutively, analytically, and then Christ centered. Taking verses out of context violates the call to analyze the song, and when we do that, we miss the Christ connection.
Psalm 116 is a song of thanksgiving. The psalmist is confessing his deep love for the Lord because the Lord has heard his plea for mercy (1) and delivered him. He was in some kind of near-death situation (3) when he called upon the Lord to deliver his soul (3). The Lord not only heard him (2), but He responded with grace and mercy (5). When he was brought low, the Lord saved him (6).
Because the Lord delivered his soul from death (8), what should he do? He will walk before the Lord in the land of the living (9). He will worship the Lord in the presence of the people (14) by lifting up the cup of salvation (13), calling on the name of the Lord (13), paying his vows (14), and offering sacrifices of thanksgiving (17). Calling on the name of the Lord and paying his vows is so important that he repeats this (13-14 and 17-18).
The point of the song is that the Lord delivered him from death (8) and restored him to the land of the living (9).
Then what is the point of saying that the death of the saints is precious in the sight of the Lord (15)?
It would be inconsistent with the rest of the song for this to mean that death is a good thing for the saints. This is not the reason for the song. The song of thanksgiving is that God delivered him from death to walk in the land of the living.
In light of the total song, what does verse 15 mean?
The word translated “precious” (ESV) means “precious, rare, splendid, weighty, costly, and highly valued.” What if the point of the song, the point that gets lost when we rip it out of context, is that God holds precious the timing and method of our death? The death of a saint means something to the Lord. It is not trivial, insignificant, unworthy of His sovereign care and decision. No, the death of His saints is of great importance to Him. And as such, when we cry out to the Lord to deliver us from death, we are talking to Hiim about something very important to Him, something highly valued, something of great weight, something rare.
Something precious.
The psalmist is remembering a time when death was knocking on his door. He cried to the Lord. And instead of getting a cold shoulder, a busy signal, a text left on read, the Lord heard his plea. Why? Because the life and death of His saints matter to Him. And when we live under the precious care of the Sovereign God, we cannot hold back our sacrifices of thanksgiving.
Eugene Peterson describes prayer as memory. He writes, “Memory is the capacity of the human spirit to connect the experience of last year with the one of yesterday, and at the same time to anticipate next week, and next year” (116). Memory is not just a regurgitation of past events but is looking at the present through the storehouse of the past, “retrieving and arranging images and insights, and then hammering them together for use in the present moment” (117). Prayer void of memory is nothing more than repeating a “dreary round of pious, or not so pious, emotions. Nothing adds up in such a life. No meaning accumulates. Prayer develops our memory with God: connections slowly emerge” (116).
The Spiritual Discipline of Praying the Psalms requires us to analyze the songs, to understand the crisis behind the prayer, to capture the train of thought, to hear the essence of the prayer. Only then can we see how that prayer, that longing, that joy is fulfilled in Christ and in our walk with Christ.
Because we are in Christ, because we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God, because we have an Advocate with the Father, because we have such a Great High Priest, because we are the temple of His Holy Spirit, our life is precious to Him, as is the timing and means of our death. We pray with great confidence, not hoping to annoy Him into granting our request. No. We pray knowing that we are precious to the Lord, we have been bought with a price, we are in Christ. We are talking to Him about something that is very precious to Him.
And this memory is why we call to the Lord today and tomorrow.
(Quotes are from Eugene Peterson’s book, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer).