Cats love yarn, however, they are not the best knitters.
(4 min. reading time)
I often feel that the thoughts floating around in my head resemble a tangled mess of yarn, much like one resulting from one or more of our cats getting a hold of my wife’s latest project before it could be safely stored away.
I have spent the past several years reading the book of Psalms and jotting down notes and inspirations as they come to me. By nature, I am a collector of information and enjoy the process of compiling the information into ordered thoughts.
How do I move from cats knitting to my wife’s knitting when it comes to my thoughts? Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators, figured this out when he said,
“Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through the lips and the fingertips.”
I decided to start a blog as a way of processing the insights and information I have compiled while reading the Psalms, which is what you are seeing now.
Blog Goals
Here are my goals in sharing my insights from Psalms in the blog format:
By providing weekly posts, I am motivated to sit down and disentangle the notes that I have compiled on a regular basis. This also provides me with a growing archive of insights on the book of Psalms which I can return to at later times.
By sharing the information in a blog format, I am able to interact with you, the reader. Maybe you will be inspired to share your own insights on the same passage with me.
The contents may inspire thoughts and discussions between you and the people around you.
The individual blog length will be longer that what you would normally find in a daily devotional guide. If you are looking for daily devotional reading of Psalms, check out Tim and Kathy Keller’s, The Songs of Jesus. I am contemplative and sometimes I sit with a certain Psalm for weeks until an insight jumps out at me. Through this blog I would like to share these insights.
These blog posts are the outcome of my journaling through the Psalms. The average time to read an individual post should be plus/minus seven minutes. I may share a link to a song or an image related to the blog theme that has been an inspiration to me which you may also find helpful in your journey with Psalms.
Blog Approach
In each blog post, I intend to do the following:
Provide context and authorship for the individual Psalm
Establish links connecting the Psalm to Jesus and the New Testament
Provide a balanced approach between grace and truth
Share from my personal experiences.
This blog is not intended to be a study of the theological underpinnings of the Psalms. Charles Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis and others have already tackled this. I am not a theologian, nor do I have any knowledge of Hebrew or Greek. I was trained as a civil engineer and have worked in that career for over thirty years.
My usual approach is to use logic and my intellect to grasp concepts as opposed to using my emotions or my heart. When I encounter the Psalms, I find that there is a collision of thoughts in my mind where logic meets emotion. I will be able to untangle the mess of my thoughts through this experience.
This blog is an attempt of that untangling. I invite you to join me on my journey. Walking along this path, my hope for you and for me is to get a glimpse of the heart of God through the heart of David. I’ll close with one of David’s many proclamations.
“It is he who made us, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”
(PSALM 100: 3, 5)
Thank you for joining me in this journey.
Up Next
Why a blog on the Psalms? In the next post I will share the inspiration for selecting Psalms as the theme for this blog.
Navigators is a worldwide organization that comes alongside people who desire a deeper connection with God by offering a transformative and holistic mentoring relationship. https://navigators.ca/about/
As quoted in Michael Hyatt, Platform: get noticed in a noisy world (HarperCollins, 2012), 124.
Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Songs of Jesus (Viking: New York, 2015).
Looking forward to reading your insights and engaging with others in this journey. I’ve already forwarded your invite to to two engineering connections that will most likely be interested as well
Hi Dave. Thanks for the message. I realized that I had neglected to include the “Subscribe” button at the end of the post. If you go back you should see it now, and you will be able to subscribe that way.
Sounds and looks great Henry. Looking forward to this.
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Looking forward to reading your insights and engaging with others in this journey. I’ve already forwarded your invite to to two engineering connections that will most likely be interested as well
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Looking forward to this, Henry. Thanks for including me on your original list of readers!
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Hi Henry. This is me trying to subscribe to future posts. Hopefully it works!
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Hi Dave. Thanks for the message. I realized that I had neglected to include the “Subscribe” button at the end of the post. If you go back you should see it now, and you will be able to subscribe that way.
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You had me hooked when you opened with a cat analogy 🙂 looking forward to following you on this journey through the psalms.
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Thanks Henry. Looking forward to following alongside your journey.
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