Telling our stories again and again

Psalms 77 and 78: Today we have an individual lament (77) and a history survey (78).  They both open with sound imagery: Psalm 77 speaks of crying aloud to God (v. 1) and 78 instructs the peope to incline their ears to the speaker. Both tell stories, but different ones. Psalm 77 tells the story of an individual's trouble and grief, and 78 is a communal story, a the history of God and God's people up to the time of David, recounting the exodus and the wilderness and the manna and plagues and trials. The psalmist is reminding the readers from where they're coming, what they've been through and all the blessing and trials along the way. "Remember where you came from," the psalmist is saying, just like many family historians like to says. "We haven't always had it easy, but we survived." As a writer, I know it is important to tell these stories again and again, teasing out different meanings each time, and hoping the repetition will burn the story in the hearer's memory. At the end of this long psalm (72 verses! history sometimes takes effort to write, after all), the psalmist used the image of sheep and shepherding to refer to  David's relationship to the Hebrews.