If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day.
Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
1我的上帝，我的上帝，你为何离弃我？为何迟迟不来救我，不听我的哀号呢？2我的上帝啊，我日夜不停地呼求，你却没有回应。3然而，你是圣洁的，你的宝座设立在以色列人的颂赞之上。1 Dios mío, Dios mío, ¿por qué me has abandonado? Lejos estás para salvarme, lejos de mis palabras de lamento.
2 Dios mío, clamo de día y no me respondes; clamo de noche y no hallo reposo. 3 Pero tú eres santo, tú eres rey, ¡tú eres la alabanza de Israel!
Thank you for reading
anneethompson.com
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If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
Please sponsor me! I am raising money for Tearfund, a brilliant aid agency. They work hard to support the poorest people in our world. Now also supporting people fleeing Ukraine, providing food and shelter. Your donation can be part of that.
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
If you would like to sponsor me, please see my Just Giving page:
If you are new to my blog, then for the next forty days things will be a little different, as we are learning Psalm 22, a poem about Easter, to raise money for Tearfund. I am attempting to learn the poem in Hebrew. Do sign up to follow my blog if you want to join our mental marathon. I will post an extract of the poem every day. Learn as much as you can…
I have divided Psalm 22 into segments, one for each day in Lent. Lent has 40 days, but Sundays are not included (don’t ask me why, sounds like cheating to me!) I have therefore divided the poem into 40 segments, and Sundays can be our recap days, when we relax and enjoy what we have learnt so far.
I suggest that you read/learn one segment each day, learning as much (or as little) as you can. If you have signed up to follow my blog, a new verse will be sent to you each day (so it will be very easy to learn—simply read it every time you check your phone, or wash your hands, or have a cup of tea).
You can choose whether to learn the poem in English, or a different language. I have included Mandarin and Spanish versions. I am going to attempt to learn it in Hebrew. I found the words online at stepbible.org so if you want a different language, check there. It’s a brilliant resource. At the very least, if we read a little each day, the poem will become very familiar, so we recognise it instantly and can join in when we hear it read. But learning it by heart would be fabulous.
As this is something of a challenge, I am going to ask people to sponsor me, to raise money for Tearfund. If you would like to sponsor me, please go to my Just Giving page:
I am reposting something I wrote last Easter–if you have followed my blog for a while you will recognise it. I decided, a year ago, that rather than give up something for Lent, I would try to learn Psalm 22. My reasons are below. Why not follow my blog and learn with me? Even if you’re not religious (I know most people reading this won’t be) then why not learn the Psalm as a mental exercise? It is after all a poem, and people learn poems that originated from all sorts of places, this one simply started as part of the Hebrew Bible. Perhaps you could learn it in a language you are learning? I will try to learn it in Hebrew, and will also post it in Mandarin and Spanish (and English, of course).
As it will be a challenge, I am going to ask people to sponsor me, to raise money for Tearfund (an aid agency who I trust to spend my money wisely). Why not do the same? I know it’s an effort, but things worth doing usually are, and think how motivating it will be to know that people will donate money if you learn those few lines of poetry each day. You can either make an old-fashioned paper chart and keep note of who is sponsoring you, or use the Just Giving and/or Facebook Fundraising platforms. I will use the online forms, so please consider sponsoring me. The Just Giving link is:
This will be fun! We will be doing something for Lent (which as a non-Anglican is simply for fun in my case) plus we will be stimulating our brains (as a defence against future dementia) AND we will be raising money for people in need. It’s a win-win situation!
Psalm 22 is chosen for a reason. I think I am slightly behind the curve, and maybe you knew this already—when Jesus was dying on the cross, many scholars believe that he was reciting Psalm 22.
The idea that Jesus quoted scripture at his most difficult time makes me think that perhaps this is something I should aspire to do. If Jesus came to give us an example of how to live, maybe when life is hard for me, I should also recite scripture—perhaps it would comfort me and help me to focus on better things than the horrible situation I am coping with. I will probably never suffer anything on the same scale as being crucified, but everyone has dark times, don’t they? We all feel overwhelmed sometimes.
Also, from a purely human viewpoint, when bad things are happening, we cope better if we can distract ourselves. The most painful thing I have ever experienced was after brain surgery when they needed to stitch a hole in the top of my head. After surgery they had left a tube going from my brain out the top of my skull, so I looked like a Telly Tubby for a few days. When they removed the tube they needed to stich the hole closed but were unable to use any anesthetic. It hurt. To distract myself, I listened to some Mandarin, and although it still hurt I wasn’t fully focussed on the pain, which helped. It therefore makes perfect sense to me that reciting scripture is a really good thing to be able to do.
Psalm 22 is very long. We will learn a few lines every day, and by Easter we will know the whole Psalm–or at least, more of it than when we started. I will divide the Psalm into segments and post them on my blog, so if you sign up to follow my blog, they will arrive as an email every morning. It will be fun, it’s good to be part of something. So now you need to plan whether or not to ask people to sponsor you, and then wait for the first section to learn on Ash Wednesday. It’s rather exciting!
