Why the Psalms are Important

There are a lot of messages of hope and help out there. This is a time when we need those kinds of words. 

But, if I’m honest with myself; There are a lot of days, hours, moments where I’m

Not. 

Okay. 

I don’t often feel anxiety, uncertainty and (let’s call it what it is) fear. I’m typically the strong, resilient, perseverant one. 

But, today is not that day. This week has not been that week. 

As I've scrolled through my preferred flavors of social media, I find equal measures of hope and despair. I don’t know how to find my center when my community, work, church, and even family have been in a state of constant flux. I’m disorientated, unsettled and honestly...

Exhausted. 

I’m tired and I want to avoid these feelings by thinking about something else. And yet, I can’t escape them, just as I can’t even escape my own home. It is in those moments that I am reminded of the type of resilience that is called for in this time. The same resilience that communities of faith have cultivated for thousands of years. The same resilience that is described in the book of Psalms. 

More than any other book of the Bible, Psalms reflects the spectrum of human life experience.

The poetry of this book speaks from the reality of our world, not as it is hoped to be, but as it truly is.  There is joy mixed with sorrow, praise held alongside pain, and despair mingled with hope. Collected within Psalms are prayers of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. 

Isn’t that how life is?

We go through seasons when all seems right with the world. We feel a sense of gratitude for the constancy of love, life, and affection. These are the Psalms of Orientation. 

Inevitably life happens, and the reality of living in an imperfect, broken world hits us and we feel anguish, hurt and alienation. Our pain and suffering clash with what we had known to be true. The pain of that moment disorientates from what we thought was stable and true. These are Psalms of Disorientation. 

Psalms of disorientation deal with the raw reality of pain and grief. Unmasked and unfiltered. Humans need to express this and God desires to hear it. Your struggle in quarantine, your frustration with your living situation, or your sorrow at the widespread devastation of this pandemic, and your fear for your family, are welcomed by God. 

You are meant to share your unfiltered feelings with God. 

Psalms demonstrate that you need to process and not pretend or push away negative thoughts. 

The way of resilient faith recognizes we must deal with pain and suffering as it really exists, but we must also trust that prayers begun in hopelessness will not end there. God delights in surprising us with hope. Psalms of New Orientation reflect feelings of great joy when God breaks through our despair and evokes a sense of newness and reorientation. 

The subversive lesson of Psalms is that pain and praise are a conjunctive force for good and both are elements of faithful living. Psalms teach us that God has and will continue to give us space to be raw, real and honest.  Our cries of desperation and delight are welcomed. 

This is precisely why the Psalms are so important. 

This is why we will be spending some time on Facebook live in the coming weeks, helping us to pray through the Psalms in this way. Join us on Facebook at Noon every day next week for our journey through the Psalms. 

Written by Sarah Wise

Sarah Wise teaches for our School of Biblical Studies and manages many of the behind the scene components for our ministry. Sarah has a Masters of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary.