Psalm Despatch #3: Continuum

The prayer book of the Bible, Psalms, shows us plenty about how we respond to God in worship, in joy, in sadness, in darkness and in victory. It does more though. It models healthy living.

Amongst the 150 Psalms that made their way into the Canon, there's a diversity of intent, perspective and orientation. Down the track, we've allocated Psalms into genres—not dissimilar to how we might dissect other forms of literature. That's useful, it reveals the heart-cry of the writers.

Across the Psalms is an integration and wholeness modeled beyond these specific prayers. As we zoom out, we see a pattern behind the prayer—a connectedness to embrace.

Integration (or Strenuous Wholeness) is about allowing God to form us in Christ through the stuff of life and our experience of God within and beyond that stuff.

Our childhood, our parents, our education, our success, our failure, our work, our play, our relationships and our spiritual heritage all form part of our journey. There's a tendency and temptation to, as one songwriter put it, place them in a box until a quieter time, lights down, you up and die. And yet, Psalms teach us over and over that, amongst the pain and regret of the past, there's fuel and hope for the future. Cast the ugly bits aside and we deny them the opportunity to inform our future (or even be a part of our story).

Take a look at the labels on Cacophony, and you'll notice that 'Strenuous Wholeness' is a thread running through many posts. There's no greater place to see it in an action, than in the Psalms.

Why? The Psalms are the prayers of people not unlike you and me who, in their triumph, victory, brokenness and shame, took their gear to God.

Within Hymnic Psalms, writers give God His worth for His timeless and steadfast love throughout generations. They're not so much 'now' Psalms as they are an outright declaration of praise for God's faithfulness through history—in creation, to His chosen people, Israel, and to the writers. An affirmation of who God has shown Himself to be. They're the truth written about God written in the poetic so we don't go forgetting.

In Laments, the plight and desperation of the writer is blurted out before God—no filters, no niceties—raw, unadulterated and unplugged. Sometimes in full fury, sometimes in complaint, sometimes in repentance. In all these though, they retreat to God. So often, there's a 'yet God' or 'but God' that becomes the pivots from looking inward to looking God-ward. Recognising God within a situation, the orientation changes from doing it solo to inviting God into the circumstance.

Thanksgiving Psalms are some of the most inspirational, heart-stretching, vibrant, worship-provoking Psalms in the corpus yet, incredibly, they are dominantly rooted in Lament. While the Lament is written from plight and desperation, Thanksgiving Psalms praise God for what He has done. Thanksgiving Psalms are the beautiful babies of the Lament. The offspring of pain. 'In my distress I called out to God...and He heard me'. They praise God for what He as done (quite specifically) and who He has been. Within a particular situation God has acted or, more commonly, God has revealed and demonstrated His character in a manner that changed the complexion of a circumstance. The tone is gratitude and joy.

The transition from Lament to Thanksgiving is not one of please-thankyou, but petition-praise. I called, you answered, and you came to my rescue. In a way, it's misleading to call them Psalms of Thanksgiving because we simply hear 'thanks' as we understand it. It's broader than that. Within our lives, within our continuum, we can rely on God's character to prevail within our worlds and, out of that revelation, we praise Him. Within the heart of the lament is the seed of thanksgiving.

This isn't an exhaustive review of Psalms, it's a vigorous biblically-informed model of integration. Strenuous wholeness is the product of a life connected. Our continued formation in Christ comes from paying attention to what He's up to in us and in our worlds. Psalms show us that God journeys with us as we invite him into the specific punctuation marks of our continuum; as we allow Him to demonstrate His power, healing, grace, mercy, forgiveness, redemption, restoration and compassion in and through us.

Our acknowledgement of Him at work through all eternity writes his character on our hearts. Running to Him in the ugliness of life allows Him to wrap his arms around us and to be present with us. And bringing Him into that ugliness allows him to turn us around and look up. Within that ugliness we discover that grace makes beauty out of ugly things—and we discover a catalyst for thanksgiving.

Integration isn't always the easy thing, but it's the God thing. And our wholeness in Christ comes from bringing all our stuff to the foot of the cross to discover that only He can join the dots of our continuum.