150 by 50: Learning All 150 Psalms By Heart Before I’m 50 Years Old
My goal is to memorize all 150 psalms by the time I’m 50 years old.
I got this idea from an awe-inspiring interview with Ben Patterson, a pastoral hero of mine. Given where I am now (and taking into consideration the marathon that is Psalm 119) I should be able to memorize a psalm every other month and make it in time. That’s easy. You’ve probably heard it said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” That’s basically my strategy here, slow and steady. To use the title of Eugene Peterson’s excellent book on the Psalms of Ascent, I expect this to be “a long obedience in the same direction.”
Vision
I’ve written a bit already about the why and the how of learning the Psalms by heart. But this is more about vision. Without vision the psalm-memorizer perishes. I have vision for the kind of man that I want to be when I’m 50 years old. I want to be like a tree planted by streams of water so that I’m fruitful in every season (Ps 1:3). I want to rejoice with trembling (Ps 2:11). I want to live in daily awareness that I have no good apart from the Lord (Ps 16:2). I want to know that the Lord’s steadfast love is better than life (Ps 63:3) so that I can lovingly give my life away. I want all that is within me to bless His holy name (Ps 103:1). I want to sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me (Ps 13:6). I want my soul to be satisfied as with fat and rich food (Ps. 63:5). I want to learn all 150 psalms by heart because for me it is good to be near God (Ps 73:28). I am persuaded biblically and historically that immersing myself in the Psalms for a lifetime is a means to this end. But how do the Psalms actually form us into this kind of person?
Poesis
The Psalms are splendid poetry. God loves poetry. About one-third of the Bible is poetry. Poetry has an ability withheld from prose to startle and surprise us into seeing with new eyes. The philosopher-poet, David Whyte says,
“Poetry is language against which you have no defenses.”
The word poem comes from the Greek word poiema which means to make. The Apostle Paul, arguably a poet himself, wrote, “We are God’s workmanship (poiema) created in Christ Jesus for good works.” God is a master poet inscribing our lives into poetry of His own. As a living poem, I want my life to be crafted from the inside-out until it has the rhythm and rhyme, the poetic structure of Jesus’ life. We participate in God’s poetic work, his poesis, by internalizing the Spirit-spoken poetry of the Psalms.
You cannot read a page of Augustine’s classic spiritual-autobiography, The Confessions, without hearing a psalm quoted or alluded to. Augustine lived a poetic life shaped by the poetry of the Psalms. The highest appraisal one can give to a poem and its poet is to invite the lines, word by word, to find a new home, inside your chest, within your heart. Marilyn McEntyre, in her spectacular and prophetic book, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies writes,
“Word by word, the poems we memorize restore to us something that slips away in the polluted streams of ordinary language and lead us to places of clarity and quietness.”
Remembrance leads to restoration. Memory is a means to making. Learning the Psalms by heart rewrites the poetry of our lives into a ballad better than the Bard. I want my speaking and acting, my praying and conversing, to draw up from deep wells of refreshing, sacred poetry. This is the purpose of Pray Psalms, to create a space for me to record my reflections as I seek the face of Jesus in the Psalms. I’ve got a long road ahead of me before I reach 150 by 50. Road trips need companions. Wanna join me?
Selah.
