In For A Landing: How Worship Grounds Us In The Familiar

front-st-brendanAs my family and I “land” in a new place, in a new community, in a new (old) country, I am struck again by the gift of worship.

Eight songs have lingered in my soul throughout the stress of our new move. Some of them are contemporary worship songs, and have become my prayers for my wife and children. Others are old hymns, that have strengthened me in my resolve to honor God in the face of tremendous stress. Others have been new songs born in my heart – I may share those with you someday.

Those expressions of worship have become a place to which I have gone, over and over again, though the terrain all around me has changed. Late nights pacing through a disheveled house, early mornings waking to more stress than the night before, have compelled me to sing, to sing, to sing my prayers and to find a familiar place beyond the turbulent place in which I find myself.

My God is mysterious, but familiar. When I worship, in lighting my candle or in singing a scripture, I am home again. I lock in, I land, I rest – if only for a moment.

AVAILABLE NOW

Sheltering Mercy and Endless Grace help us rediscover the rich treasures of the Psalms—through free-verse prayer renderings of their poems and hymns—as a guide to personal devotion and meditation. Sheltering Mercy helps the reader pray Psalms 1-75; Endless Grace leads in prayer through Psalms 76-150.

The church has always used the Psalms as part of its prayer life, and they have inspired countless other prayers. Each book contains 75 prayers drawn from the Book of Psalms, providing lyrical sketches of what authors Ryan Smith and Dan Wilt have seen, heard, and felt while sojourning there. Each prayer is a response to the Psalms written in harmony with Scripture. These prayers help us quiet our hearts before God and welcome us into a safe place amid the storms of life.

These artful, poetic, and classic devotional books are a perfect gift, and feature compelling stunning illustrations and hardcover binding, offering a fresh way to reflect on and pray the Psalms. Co-written with Ryan Whitaker Smith, Brazos Publishing.

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