I Borrowed David’s Harp—Contemporary Psalms in the Poetic Style of King David: With Refreshing and Thought Provoking Insights

By Rebecca Lamarche

Brilliant panache is added to the genre of introspection and self-growth! Rebecca has artistically resurrected the beautiful, poetic worship style of the Shepherd-King David. A unique, fresh approach brings new inspiration to your journaling. With imaginative skill, she utilizes the written word like a paintbrush in her picturesque turn of phrase by shading meaning into the ordinary. This stimulating fashion will add a splash of refreshment to your quiet time!
Contemporary, Psalm-style poetry opens each topical thought, prayer or praise, accompanied by
an interesting,
often entertaining,
always stimulating
short narrative of the topic that sketches a present-day life application.
Scriptures re-enforce the power tool of God’s Word, and blank lined pages are included to allow for the poet in you to compose your own thoughts and psalms!
Destined to reignite the expressive spirit of worship to personal devotion and journaling!
Makes a delightful gift book!
Don’t forget to give one to yourself!

Endorsement
“At once inspirational and vulnerable, Rebecca Lamarche’s I Borrowed David’s Harp weaves poetry with personal story, offering fresh insight into everyday scripture readings. Rebecca reminds readers that the Bible is not a 12-step self-help book, but rather a relationship with a personal God, who yearns for His people to smile at the future, and the now. You’ll find I Borrowed David’s Harp a pure joy to read, not only once, but over and over.”
—Cornelia Becker Seigneur, speaker and author of
Images of America: WEST LINN and WriterMom Tales.

“Beautifully written, biblically sound, with wonderful insight. Every page drew me in, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to deepen their faith and strengthen their walk with God.”
—Jimmy Myers, PhD, LPC-S, Executive Director, The Timothy Center

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490818368

Rebecca Lamarche

A gifted poet, author, and energetic speaker-presenter, Rebecca weaves her passion for Christ into her writing with a unique insight, humor, and depth, bringing biblical relevance to our human commonality. She boldly communicates an unswerving faith in the God who makes us whole. Rebecca lives in Austin, Texas.

Book preview

I BORROWED DAVID’S HARP

—Contemporary Psalms

In the Poetic Style of King David

With Refreshing Devotions

To

Inspire Thought and

Personal Worship

Rebecca Lamarche

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Copyright © 2013 Rebecca Lamarche.

Cover Photograph by Jacqueline Pierce

Photography by Jacqueline Pierce, courtesy of Jacqueline Pierce Photography

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1835-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1836-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922124

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/21/2014

Table of Contents

A Day In The Life

A Rosebud In The Storm

A Wildflower

All Eternity

As The Sands Shift

Bride Of The Church, Arise!

Broken Pieces

Broken Soul

Choosing

Creation, Creator And I

Do You Believe?

Festival Of Jazz

Flirting Wonders

For The Stars At Night

Free Me Lord

From Sobs To Song

God’s Glory

He Restoreth My Soul

Hope With Painted Wings

If You Have An Hour

Invisible, Yet Seen

Joshua’s Battles

Joy In Today

Mercy Holding Me

Morning Prayer

My Friend

My King So Amazing

My Prayer

My Search

New Day

Oh Glory! That Wonderful Day!

On Christ The Solid Rock

Remember

Run, Coward, Run

Spectrums

Sweet Glory

Tears

Temptation Road

The Ageless Quest

The Face Of The Beast

The Fifth Sparrow

The Heartbeat Of My Life

The Laughing Savior

The Will To Climb

Unfettered Happiness

Where The Starlight Sings

Whimsy

The Life

Endnotes

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To Beth

Of all of the women in my life,

Beth

you have taught me the most about what it means to have a personal worship relationship with Jesus Christ. You took my raw passion for Jesus, my hunger for knowledge of God, and my unyielding commitment to serve Him with my life; you showed me how to put the three together, creating a dazzling combustion of grace, love, and power through the Holy Spirit.

You are one of the greatest gifts the

Lord has given me in my life;

in turn, you have given me by far the greatest gift of all:

an amazing intimacy with the Lover of my soul.

You did this simply by being obedient and faithful

to walk out the message of Him who called you.

As this, my first published book, is a selection of my personal journaling of worship poetry, I felt it only fitting to honor you

~ my mentor, my sister, my friend ~

with overwhelming love and eternal gratitude.

GIRLFRIENDS!

I remember the tears that fell as I waved farewell to my Bible Study women to travel to another state for God’s next great adventure. As a going-away gift, they presented me with my first electric typewriter! It was top-of-the-line, with the white erasing ribbon and all! They told me that I was to write my book with it, and get it published.

And I did; I have written many books since then.

I just haven’t been very quick about the publishing part!

That was over thirty years ago.

So many friends have passed through my Bible Studies and my life over the years. It has been these women, huddled over Bibles and coffee, hanging onto every word of my every new discovery through God’s magnificent autobiography, who became my vine of encouragement. They believed in my calling. Each rosebud along that vine is a friend that I have prayed with, cried with, laughed with, had babies with, and with whom I have buried loved ones. If it weren’t for them, I could not do what I love best ~ and that is to tell the wonderful story of divine love in Jesus Christ, and the life-changing power of His Holy Spirit in our lives.

That is my passion.

He is our hope.

So to all my friends along the journey that has been, and is yet to be, I want to dedicate the following poem. May we, as sisters in Christ, ever hold to the Vine, loving each other in honor of Jesus who so loves us.

Let us serve Him, shoulder to shoulder. Zephaniah 3:9

THE CLIMBING ROSE OF FRIENDSHIP

friendship is a mighty word

that beats from heart to heart;

it is the life or death to one

whose soul has been a part

of all the secrets and the dreams

she whispers on the wind,

a tapestry that’s woven from

remembrances within.

a friendship is not something

that one nurtures all alone,

each sister is the seed of love

from which the plant is grown ~

a climbing rose of sharing both

the fragrant bloom and thorn,

the laughter, memories, sorrows,

and the buds that are reborn.

from seasons cold and springtimes warm,

and years of summer sun,

with melodies of wind-chime tones

that ring out full of fun!

when autumn brings the browns and golds

of color to her leaves,

she readies firm her trunk

and to the arbor safe, she cleaves.

a true friend shares the winter chill,

the cold of dormant time,

and patient, she waits for her friend

to heal and grow and climb,

to new heights with new branches

that reach high in vibrant praise!

for the Lord who gives companionship,

to walk her through her days.

and should the time come for a friend

to lay to rest her sister,

the tears that fall upon the soil

are sweet, as if she’d kissed her.

and where they fall she may not see

the seedling, in her grief,

yet kind and merciful is our God

to hold, and breathe relief.

so quietly and gently

over time and seasons turning,

the Lord of love brings comfort

to the heart that has been yearning,

for the sting of loss, the cold of ice,

the thorns to stop their pain;

He heals the broken heart

just as the sunshine dries the rain.

and that seedling that lay out of sight

in the hour of her despair,

has grown to wrap her vines around

new friendships they now share.

ever intertwining, our lives bloom

from what has been,

into a budding, lovely rose

of friendship once again.

so hold the hand that reaches out

to walk along beside,

and hold fast to her words of truth

that bless ~ or prune ~ or guide,

for the friendship that is tended

by a gardener with care

is a friendship ever blooming ~

she’s the friend that’s ever there.

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Introduction to I BORROWED DAVID’S HARP

David.

Just his name conjures in my mind a romancing of imagination, a longing, somehow, to know this charismatic, larger-than-life king. He is altogether alluring in his tenderness, mighty in his valor, commanding in his presence, fierce in battle, transparent in his introspection, afire in his worship, flawed in his humanity, ruddy, handsome, brave. Even the words that describe him best, somehow, inspire me to reach a bit more boldly into life, more determined in pursuit of my own divinely inspired dreams and destiny.

Part of David’s mystery, to be sure, is his complex and contradictory character. David did nothing small! A great king, with convictions of stone, and an unfaltering faith – even as he ran for his life, or fell to the ground confessing his sin, or questioned, in frustration or fear, God’s delay in answering him. This man knew his God. He knew his God, in the same way he lived his life – with an all-consuming passion, a fullness of experience that left no room for anything else. He was enthralled with the Lord God Almighty, his cup overflowed with zeal, his heart overflowed with a love both joy-filled and poignant. A love with which David the boy, and David the King, would unabashedly demonstrate in any and all circumstances, regardless of his critics, if it brought glory to the Lord.

Beginning as an unassuming shepherd in the solitude of Bethlehem’s hills, he mirrors the birth of Christ in Bethlehem, who humbly entered the world among the commonplace. How fitting, then, that this youth who so loved his Lord, would fill the region with his songs, played on a hand-carved harp with tender expression and skill. He christened the very stars that would watch over the Messiah King’s birth centuries later. Perhaps David sat, unknowing, in the primitive stable-cave of his Lord’s entrance to earth, and sang his praises to Him there. His rugged young hands could pull a lamb from thickets on a cliff, or swing a sling to kill a bear and a lion to save any life in his flock. Hands, David said in Psalm 144:1, that God trained for war, fingers that were divinely given skill for battle; yet that divine skill would devotedly caress the strings of his harp, as he would sing love songs to his Rock, his Fortress, his Deliverer, the God in whom he placed his trust.

David, a prescient name for Christ. The Name that Prophets used in proclaiming the Anointed One, the Savior to come. According to Jewish genealogies and commentators, the name David had never been given prior to our shepherd boy’s birth. His father Jesse, in divine foreshadowing, bestowed it upon his youngest of eight sons, a name that means, Beloved.

David’s early, gentle life as a shepherd influenced his character with deeply carved traits that would later be knit into the fabric of his psalms; those years worshiping his God would never become hardened by the tempestuous course he would travel to reach his throne.

It is said, Poets learn in suffering what they teach in song. Such would certainly be true of this life. Of all the great men in Scripture, none are put through so much human experience, from one spectrum to the other of emotion, adventure, life-threat, betrayal, temptation, repentance, heinous sin, consequence, forgiveness, worship, – and then drawn to rise repeatedly for the next work that God would give him. Humble and contrite, he never lost sight that his greatness came from the Almighty. He was generous of nature, kind, and fair, and still at times his fierce vengeance broke through his colorful personality. Yet, no one judged David more harshly than did he, himself.

He is likened to our Lord and King, who, though without sin, was in all points tempted as we are. David, too, had to be tempted as we are, so that through the weaving tapestry of his life, each psalm would hold a thread of our shared fallen nature through all history. A thread that would guide or comfort, exhort or give example, praise and pray in desperation. His words, through all ages, would be the source of solace, strength, and devoted adulation to set in place the pathway to expressive worship for any servant of the Lord.

David is simply a lovable hero; the coupling of the warrior and the poet, the tale of shepherd boy to king, the rarity of such integrity and generosity in a man of power – never corrupted by opportunity, and above all, his never waning childlike wonder and dependence on God alone for all things. He has such a profound and joy-filled trust in the Divine Friend whom he communes with as his own Shepherd, his own Warrior, his own King. Men and nations may have bowed in obligatory submission to David the King, but all hearts throughout the centuries have bowed voluntarily to David, the shepherd boy with the harp.

The Spirit of God indeed acted mightily through David’s natural gifts. In the orchestration of his ever-winding path of variegated life experiences, God birthed not only a heroic man of faith for all time, but from him also was born a new form of inspiration and personal worship. Although many hands struck the harp after him, it is still said that David remains, emphatically, the sweet psalmist of Israel.

Perhaps – quite hopefully so! – the revolving of our life seasons is not as colorful as those of King David’s were. Yet our own collection of experiences still canvas the spectrum of emotions – fear, exuberance, frustration, slander, wonder, betrayal, awe, bewilderment, romance, grief, joy…we are complex beings, indeed! Common to every sinner and every saint is the crossroads when pain goes long, or patience runs short, in which our soul reaches out to ask the question, "Where are you, God?" The book of Psalms is a rich treasure to express to the Almighty our raw and honest feelings, and to hear back from Him through His own inspired words.

Yes, humanity bonds with humanity from the Genesis of our creation to our current world in turmoil, and on through John’s Revelation. It is at that long awaited time when the promised wiping away of tears and revealing of Jesus in all His resurrected Glory finally arrives!

Our ever-changing societies are perhaps the only altering picture. We battle David’s same emotions, we wonder at David’s same stars, we are in awe of the same creation that moved David with its beauty and magnificence, and we worship David’s same God.

I read aloud the words of the psalmists and marveled at how much a 21st century woman has in common with a shepherd boy, a prophet, a king and a handful of priests from 1400-586 BC! For it was in that year that the Israelites were taken into Babylonian captivity, lamenting, and singing what later would become Psalm 137 in their despair. There they hung their harps on the poplars, so great was their grief and sorrow, while their captors tormented them, taunting, Sing us the songs of Zion! Sing us your songs of God! I am sure they felt that their broken hearts and their captive people would never sing again. Then in God’s prophesied fullness of time, these same shattered people, set free to return to Zion, sang what would be for us Psalm 126, "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed! Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord had done great things for us, and we were filled with joy." (Italics mine)

This is where the book of my own heart’s psalms began. Yes, Psalms of any era are a collection of praise and prayer as varied as are the days that preclude their writing. For that reason, the poems and psalms of mine in this book are not categorized by theme. I write what I feel, I write what I believe, and I write about special events; I write what I am inspired to at any particular moment. For much of my poetry, a melody accompanies the words, singing a spiritual song in my mind. I encourage you to listen carefully, perhaps you will hear the musical praise of your own heart as well. In response to the worship in my poetry, it is my hope that each psalm or vignette story in this book draws you into a more intimate understanding of your own personal struggles and joys, and how Jesus is the All in All – for them all, and for us all, for all time.

There is a psalmist and a poet in each of us! For it is the part of our spirit, a voice from our soul that transcends the logic of our minds, bypasses all of our inhibitions, and voices words of expression not common to our everyday colloquialisms. For me, I am often as flowery in my praise as is a fool in love, gushing and overflowing with phrases like a lover’s sonnet!

How appropriate! For I am in love with Jesus! He has romanced my spirit and my heart with His patient love, His mercy when I angered Him in my selfishness, His compassion at my suffering. I have had times of such grieving that I could almost feel the very cracking of my heart into pieces, as He held me in His arms. He has taught me, healed me, warned me, guided me, and never left or forsaken me. I have heard His teasing in my spirit as we shared laughter over my fumbles and embarrassing moments! He is my Beloved, the lover of my soul.

I have been so moved by the beauty of a sunset, the new hope in a sunrise, or the magnificence of a snowcapped mountain against the blue of an Oregon sky! It’s the blending of beauty, awe, and wonder, all twisting me inside until I can hardly breathe for its consuming power overtaking me. Such, as defined by C.S. Lewis, is the soul in worship.

I remember writing my first poetry when I was six years old. In looking through my prayer journals and the boxes of my writings to gather bits of poetry and writing for this book, I enjoyed the biography that my poetry told of me! Drawn back in time I recognized the holy hand of such a tender God, who held me first when at three years old I looked into the lifeless staring eyes of my mother, who, for the first time, did not answer when I called to her. A head-on collision took her life while I slept on her lap, and brought a tender Comforter in that profoundly silent moment to whisper into my soul that I would be all right; He would take care of me, He would never leave me. I believe that is why at the very first moment I could write, I somehow found poetry to lift me into a safe realm of expression that I did not always understand at that moment, yet later discovered meaning to.

Fun times did indeed return to my broken heart. My father enjoyed making people laugh! His silly, made-up rhymes taught my brain to think in that vein, as we would try to out-rhyme each other over some of the craziest things. Hence, as a girl, I described my world in singsong melodies and simple rhythms. By my teens, teachers, awards, and offers of publication noted me for my poetry.