Whenever I crank up my car, my phone connects to Bluetooth and Sandra McCraken’s “Abiding City” begins to play. I’m not as tech savvy as I used to be, so I don’t understand why the song comes on automatically, but I’m not in a hurry to change it. After all, whether you’re into the Beatles, Bon Jovi, or Big Daddy Weave, every ride needs a few good songs in the queue. 

Earlier this week, Greg Lanier wrote about how the Book of Psalms is like a playlist: “It gives God’s people songs for every kind of situation: celebration, mourning, and hope. And this hymnbook is even the playlist for Jesus’s life.” Lanier shares how the Psalms contain prophecies about Jesus, patterns that Jesus reenacts, and also “songs sung by Jesus himself.” Because Jesus owns the psalms as his own, they become the “autobiographical playlist of [his] eternal sonship, divine lordship, bodily incarnation, and suffering.” 

Years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer registered his surprise at the fact that there’s a book of songs and prayers in the Bible: “The Holy Scripture is the Word of God to us. But prayers are the words of men . . . are these prayers to God also God’s own word?” 

They are. 

We can pray and sing these words with confidence. We can make the psalms the playlist of our lives, knowing that the Savior to whom they so beautifully testify also sung them before us—and through the Spirit sings along with us now. 

Singing along the road,