Three minutes. That's it. I've spent longer waiting for my coffee to cool down.
And yet. Here I am, thinking about this tiny audiobook days later while grading essays on The Great Gatsby. My students would probably roll their eyes - Mr. Williams is having another moment about ancient texts again. But honestly? There's something worth talking about here.
When Brevity Becomes the Point
Look, I'll admit I was skeptical. Most people hear "Psalm 40" and think of the U2 song (which, fine, it's a good song). But the original text - David's actual words - that's a different animal entirely. There's a similar rawness in Alchemist, where the simplicity of the language carries the weight of something much bigger. And Lorelee Siemens gets that. She doesn't try to make this into some theatrical production. She doesn't oversell it. She just... lets the words breathe.
This reminds me of what Hemingway said about prose - that the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. Siemens seems to understand that the weight of these words comes from what's underneath them. Three thousand years of people turning to this psalm when they're stuck in the mud, waiting for rescue. She doesn't need to dramatize that. The text does the work.
The Voice That Doesn't Try Too Hard
I listen to a lot of audiobooks where narrators feel the need to perform. Capital-P Perform. And sometimes that's exactly right - you want someone chewing the scenery for a thriller or bringing distinct voices to a sprawling novel. But for scripture? For poetry this old and this raw?
Siemens takes a different approach. Her pacing is deliberate without being slow. She gives you space to actually sit with lines like "He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay." (Don't tell my students I'm quoting scripture in an audiobook review. They already think I'm ancient.)
The production is clean - no weird audio artifacts, no background noise. Just her voice and the words. Which is exactly what you want here.
Who Should Press Play (And Who Shouldn't)
Here's where I'll be honest: this isn't for everyone. If you're looking for deep theological exploration or extensive commentary, skip it. It's three minutes. It's one psalm. It's meant for reflection, not education.
But that's also kind of the beauty of it? I listened to this during my morning walk along the lakefront, and it hit different than reading the same words on a page. Something about hearing them spoken aloud - the way Siemens handles the shift from desperation to praise, from waiting to gratitude - it lands in a way that silent reading sometimes doesn't.
My wife Denise, who puts up with my podcast ramblings about Faulkner, would probably say I'm overthinking a three-minute audiobook. She's not wrong. But the prose deserves to be savored, even when - especially when - there's not much of it.
Mr. Williams's Final Word
I keep coming back to the contrast between expectation and experience here. You'd think something this short would feel incomplete. A snack when you wanted a meal. But Siemens makes it feel like a complete thought. A breath. A pause in the middle of whatever chaos you're carrying.
Is it going to change your life? Probably not. But for commuters, for people who need a moment of quiet before a hard day, for anyone who's ever felt stuck and needed to hear that waiting isn't the same as being forgotten - yeah. This works.
The narrator understands that pause is punctuation. And sometimes three minutes of the right words, spoken the right way, is exactly enough.
