Week 24: Psalms 42-77

Welcome to week 24...just two weeks shy of the year's halfway mark, which means that we've read almost half the Bible!

If you've missed some reading, don't despair.  Jump right in here and resolve to finish the balance of the year on a strong note.  God has a way of speaking to us in timely ways whenever we open his word.

Here's our reading schedule for the week:

Weekend: Psalms 42-47
Monday: Psalms 48-53
Tuesday: Psalms 54-59
Wednesday: Psalms 60-66
Thursday: Psalms 67-72
Friday: Psalms 73-77

Students of Scripture call the Book of Psalms the "most New-Testament Old Testament book."  The Psalms are prayers, praises, petitions, reflections, and even complaints...voiced by people who are trying to sort out life in relationship with Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, says that the writers of the Psalms alternate between periods of "orientation," "disorientation," and "new orientation" (see his superb commentary, The Message of the Psalms).

This is our spiritual journey.  There are times in our lives when all is right with the world.  Songs and praises flow easily.  There are other times, however, in which dark clouds darken our days.  We are in a state of disorientation.  The Psalms help us through these periods by giving us vocabulary by which to articulate praise and thanksgiving during times of "orientation," and examples of how to express dismay, confusion, and even anger amid the periods of "disorientation."

The silver lining that the Book of Psalms reflects is that periods of disorientation are followed by seasons of "new orientation."  God will never leave or forsake us.  "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging."  God says, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth" (Psalm 46:1-2, 10).