Praying the Blues
- Maggie Wallem Rowe
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
What do you wish you could say to God if only you had the words?
“The Psalms are the bluegrass of the Bible.”
This peculiar metaphor popped out of my mouth while I was teaching a lesson on the Psalms to our adult Sunday School class. Mike and I had just attended a Balsam Range concert the night before, which might explain my preoccupation with this musical genre.
Balsam Range not only refers to the sweep of mountain ridges we see from our front deck, but also our hometown group of musicians who’ve won numerous international awards for their fiddling and strumming, picking and plucking. The boys of Balsam Range also happen to be men of faith.
I’m a girl who hasn’t been a fan of any particular group since the Monkees during their heyday in the late 1960’s. Sorry to say that Davy, Peter, and Michael have already taken that last train to Clarksville, but at 80 drummer Micky is embarking on a new tour. Hey, hey!
My high school youth group appropriated the Monkees’ hit “I’m a Believer” for reasons Millennials would say are totally obs, but decades have passed since I listened to a group’s music enough to memorize the lyrics.
When I was leading our class through a discussion of Psalms, we noodled over the fact that lament psalms comprise over one-third, some would say nearly half, of the psalter. Bonhoeffer called Psalms “the prayer book of the soul.”
Many psalms were put to music in their original form. Forget a harp and lure. The lament psalms were written to the tune of a fiddle and banjo.
Just as Balsam Range sings those high, lonesome bluegrass blues about children who left too soon and lovers who broke their hearts, David does some wailing of his own in his psalms. He’s got enemies surrounding him and a son who hates him. He’s been falsely accused of some sins, and he’s writhing in regret for others.
Like our lives, bluegrass and the psalms gravitate between two poles: foot-tapping praise and hand-writing lament.
But here’s the crucial difference—the audience.
Musicians play to a crowd. The psalms shout their glory and pain to an Audience of One.
Maybe, like me, you were raised in a faith tradition that shunned rote prayers. I thought maybe we’d be awarded extra points for originality in our petitions, fresh angles to our prayers.
Sometimes, though, I am plumb out of new words.
Help her, Lord, I say again and again. She is so scared for her boy.
Heal him, Father! I cry. We love this man. His family needs him.
Hold them together, dear Jesus. Their marriage has ripped apart.
It’s then that the laments of the Psalmist explode from my throat.
“Now hear my prayer, listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles.” Ps. 88:2-3
“O Lord, come back to us! How long will you delay?” Ps. 90:13
“Rescue me, Lord, from liars and all deceitful people.” Ps. 120:2
“My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.” Ps. 72:26
God not only gave us his Word but wants us to pray it back to him. If in his most desperate hour Jesus prayed the psalms (“My God, my God, who have you abandoned me?”), why can’t we do the same? The power is not in us or in the quantity or quality of the words we spit out in our suffering.
The power is in the One who hears us.
The musicians of Balsam Range are psalmists, too. Please take a moment to listen to this modern-day lament.
“Help me to hold on, don’t let me let go,
Lord, it’s the only prayer that I know
It surely ain’t much, but I’m down so low
Help me to hold on, don’t let me let go.”
© Balsam Range, 2019
Sometimes the only prayer we can pray is the cry of the psalmist. “Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand.” (Ps. 73:23)
Help me to hold on, Lord; don’t let me go.
It’s music to God’s ears.
With so much love,
Maggie
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