Currently I am preaching a series on the Psalms. We are not going through them in order nor are we taking just the epic Psalms so familiar. We are trying to cover a range of the kinds of Psalms we find in the Psalter (praise and lament and everything). In reading in the midst of the series I ran across something last week that I found very provoking.

Walter Brueggeman is a neo-orthodox Old Testament Scholar. I read his stuff carefully and do not agree with everything he writes. But he has a keen mind and an insightful pen. In his little book Praying the Psalms he describes God's actions to move us onto growth and through the experiences of the broken world. Under a heading of "Beyond Our Time of Equilibrium" in a chapter on "Letting Experience Touch the Psalter" Brueggemann says this: "I suggest, in a simple schematic fashion, that our life of faith consists in moving with God in terms of: a.) being securely oriented; b.) being painfully disoriented; and c.) being surprisingly reoriented." He notes that being securely oriented is a situation of equilibrium. We love to be there. It is when we have that sense that all is well. We can even believe that God is "blessing us", his favor resting upon us. I must confess to a gravitation to this station of moving with God. Life seems well and at peace and settled. Isn't this God's design? Isn't this the tangible expression of His blessing? His sentence in the middle of a paragraph stabbed me: "This is the mood of much of the middle-class Church" (page 3). Ouch! Is that us? Is that who we are at Southgate? It sent me thinking and reading the Psalms differently.

I find that "painfully disoriented" category to fit and to help with understanding the cries from many of the Psalms. The passion in the cries is full and even raw. How many of us know folks who in the midst of life's brokenness experience painful disorientation of the soul? "Where is God? Why? Where is this going? This doesn't feel right! I am feeling like I stepped outside of the circumference of God's care." Some Psalms are snapshots of such disorientation, painfully scribed out in words. Most do not end there (although Psalm 88 would certainly be an exception).

Most end with a surprising reorientation, a "nevertheless, I am continually with you" (Psalm 73:23) style. The reoriented state moves us forward in our trust in God. We are more weathered, leaning at a greater angle from thereafter into the wind of providence. We are more apt to delight in the anticipation of reorientation, notwithstanding the anguish of the disturbed peace (or the change from the secure orientation). Trouble free lives are the envy, but a boring sense of self indulgence can be the price one pays for staying in the security of a serenity not desiring to be bothered by providence that would press our spirit and drive us forward, albeit through anguish at times. Before he died Francis Schaeffer said that the central driving force behind the church in America was a drive for "personal peace and happiness and just to be left alone".

God is a genius in His dealings with us. Where are you today? In the midst of a death grip on your hold of this present moment of "secure orientation"? Or are you in the midst of the fearful experience of having the bottom drop out and the pain of disorientation crash in? The old gospel hymn "God Is Still on the Throne" comes to mind. After the resurrection we who follow Jesus carry in our spirits that notion that a surprising reorientation must be just around the corner. Some resolutions are even sorted out in time, while others await that Great Day of the Lord. In the meantime we sing our Psalms and exercise that long obedience in the same direction.

We must crucify our insatiable desire to live happily ever after in a secure orientation that is devoid of pressing struggle while we live this side of God's great resolution at that the end of the age. We embrace the providence that He brings with a focus on the heart He has always manifested toward us in Christ. Calvary declares that "He spared not His own Son" (Romans 8:32). So keep going pilgrim. Come on now, chin up, knees down! Let's sing another Psalm!

Day by day and with each passing moment Strength I find to meet my trials here Trusting in my Father's wise bestowment I've no cause for worry or for fear He whose heart is kind beyond all measure Gives unto each day what He deems best Lovingly it's part of pain and pleasure Mingling toil with peace and rest (Carolina Sandell Berg)