Psalms The Book of Meditation

TEACH ME O LORD, WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO, AND I WILL OBEY YOU FAITHFULLY, PSALM 87:11a


The psalmist who wrote this verse was thinking of God as a Father whom he can communicate and relate with. This process of communicating with God and taking his word into his heart and obeying it in his life is called meditation. One of the best books written on meditation in recent times is John W.Klenig’s ‘Grace Upon Grace,’ published by Concordia Publishing in 2008. He shared a chapter on meditation where he referred to the book of Psalms as the manual for meditation in the Bible. Klenig quoted Martin Luther, the great reformer, who wrote his commentary on Psalms described meditation as: ‘therefore this lover, the blessed man, has his love, the law of God, always in his mouth, always in his heart, and if possible, in his ears.” After describing meditation as such, Dr. Martin Luther defined meditation as “continual talking and conversation with the mouth.” Meditation is then unceasing talking, conversing with God then taking heed of God’s law, teachings, directions and will for one’s life and follow them faithfully.

Devotional life is a way where one is in constant communication with his God and take counsel of all his teachings and obeying them in his life. God speaks to his people in all situations of their life. The Psalmists who wrote their mediations were incidents of human facets of life one can experience. In those experiences, they confronted God with their happiness, sadness, grief or joy and accepted God’s direction for them. Klenig affirmed the Book of Psalm as an ideal for our meditation for two reasons. One mentioned already that it reflected all situations of life one can experience and two, as Klenig said, “it facilitates meditation that is inspired and produced by the Holy Spirit.” He said, “The Book of Psalms in its present form has been designed to teach people to mediate. It is the biblical manual on mediation. Therefore, editors of the books of Psalm use Psalm 1 as the opening of the book because it speaks about mediation. The Psalms, as Klenig mentioned, “have been produced by meditation on God’s word, are meant to teach God’s people how to mediate on God’s word.” The editors of Psalms did exactly that by teaching the art of meditation by giving the readers a series of meditations on different topics and an invitation to join. The Psalms invite us to identify with the speakers in the Psalm. Take the first Psalm, for instance, and see how you can identify yourself with the speaker.

Psalm 1

Blessed is the man

who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

Nor stands in the way of sinner,

Nor sits in the seat of scoffer;

but his delight is in the law of the LORD,

and on his law he meditates day and might.

He is like a tree

planted by streams of water,

that yields its fruits in its season,

its leaf does not withers.

In all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous,

for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,

for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.



This Psalm basically related to two basic ways of living to different kinds of meditations. They are people who meditate on the teachings of the wicked and those who meditate on the will of God. The writer showed where these two different meditations will lead to. Those meditate on the teachings of the wicked will end up in doom and damnation while those who seek counsel of the LORD’s law will not stand the judgment of the LORD.

Psalm 87:11a tell us that in our meditation with God’s word, God will teach us and we will obey Him and this obedience will yield fruits in our lives, that is, through the power of the Holy Spirit.



Teach us, O Lord, and help us to meditate on your word everyday so that we may have joy in obeying it and bear much fruit, In Jesus ’name. Amen.