PSALM FIVE DAYBREAK! To many people in the world, morning is the most serious part of the day. Morning prayer can be from daybreak until noon. The fifth Psalm has this most telling phrase in it - "Thou shalt hear my voice in the morning, O Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee!" If we break the day with God, we will then be sure that the day will not break us. There is danger in each day we live. The singer of Psalm five was going out to meet foes who were treacherous and relentless. In his song he tells how to prepare for each day. He tells us how to start the day with God, and the first thing he deals with is our thoughts. The Psalmist deals with thought on three levels...words - meditation - cry. Some people's approach to God is in the multitude of words. Words, words, nothing but empty words. This is the way many people think: they think out loud, yet they give no thought to what they say. We must beware empty words. Do not start the day with a formula which you rattle of like a parrot each daybreak. There is no life nor deliverance in a set of words. Meditation is thought at a deeper level. It is possible to sing the words of a hymn and yet to have your mind occupied with something else. To meditate you must concentrate. Concentrate as though you were preparing for an examination. For if God attends to our voice, He will certainly examine our hearts. The deepest level of thought, by which we approach God, is described in the simple word "CRY". The way the Psalmist uses the word implies the expression of a deep longing within our being. Let us follow the Psalmist's theme with the day before us, and a deep longing in our hearts to see the hand of God in this day. The Psalmist refers to a threefold activity at Daybreak. "In the morning Thou shalt hear my voice." The day begins with worship. In this way we give God His rightful place in our hearts and lives. In this way the rest of the day is transformed. We owe God worship. We are made to worship Him. Not just by saying the right words, but by a cry of adoration from the heart. It is the morning sacrifice of praise - the fruit of our lips - expressing the depth of our souls. Any other way of beginning the day is very much to our detriment. The Psalmist continues :- "In the morning will I direct unto Thee." It can be translated, "I will order unto Thee." I will arrange the day AS UNTO THE LORD. How often do we make our plans first and then ask God to bless what we have arranged for the day. Far better to pray first and plan afterwards. God has set out principles for our lives and it is for us to arrange our lives within these principles. In the Old Roman Empire the gateways of the estates of the rich were thronged each morning by dependents, each bearing a basket to receive the daily gift of food. If we were likewise utterly dependent upon God for our food each day, we would not miss a day at His gate. Yet the truth of the matter is that we ARE dependent upon Him for our daily bread. ORDER THE DAY UNTO HIM! The third activity the Psalmist mentions is, "I will look up!" Perhaps a better translation would be, "I will watch!" The thought is not that the singer would look up to heaven all day, but that he will watch his way through the day. Happy days start with God! The progress of that happy day is preserved as we watch it. The psalm finishes, "Let them that trust Thee, rejoice!" Our days are in the hands of God. Break each day with Him. Copyright (c) 1995, Hedley Palmer. All rights reserved. ---------------------------------------------------- file: /pub/resources/text/hpalmer/psalms: ps-005.txt .