the Psalms.

I usually have a hard time with being consistent in reading my Bible, but these past couple of months have been different. At the beginning of the school year I knew that I needed to get myself into a routine including spending some time in the Word everyday. I'm really bad at picking out random passages to read and I usually just pick out parts that I am already familiar with and that I know I like. So I decided to read through the Psalms, taking it only one or two a day and pairing them with some passages from the New Testament, usually the Epistles because they're my favorites. It was really great at first and I just wanted to keep reading them but instead paced myself so that I could spend more time really reading into them instead of reading over them. I was comfortable with the early Psalms because they seemed familiar... and I had a lot of them highlighted or underlined already which of course means that they are really good. Towards the middle (and this is where I wish that I had paid better attention in New Testament class so I really knew what I was talking about... oh well) they start to get kind of depressing because they are laments and complaints and stuff like that. Those ones were pretty rough to get through, but I made it out alive. Finishing up the entire book was super exciting and I was actually pretty sad because I looked forward to reading a Psalm everyday and now I have moved on to other books. But anyways, I just wanted to share my thoughts and things I learned from reading through the Psalms...
1. I learned how to praise and adore God a lot better through words and how to see Him in everything.
2. I learned a lot more about praying and how to pray 'better.' Sometimes after reading I would go over the words and make it into a prayer and incorporate it into my conversations with God during that week.
3. Talking to God is easy and we should just tell Him everything and talk to Him all the time.
4. We are pretty much nothing compared to God. My favorite verse I came across during this Bible poetry journey was 78:39 - "He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return." This is not the typical 'trust in the Lord and praise His name' passage, but it really struck me as to how worthless and unimportant we are, yet God still sent His son to die for us. Even though we were sinners and still continue to knowingly live in sin, He had mercy on us.
So ya, just some random thoughts and rambling sentences on how great it was to read through the Psalms.