Learning to pray in the dark, in the depths, means praying from our own darkness and difficulty. God hears us because of his great love and not because of anything we have done, could do, or will ever do. Christ hears us because he has been in the depths and finds us there.

Here is the final quote from the sermon.

Against all of this the Psalms issue a mighty protest and invite us into a more honest facing of the darkness. The reason the darkness may be faced and lived in is that even in the darkness, there is One to address. The One to address is in the darkness but is not simply a part of the darkness (John 1:1-5). Because this One has promised to be in the darkness with us, we find the darkness strangely transformed, not by the power of easy light but by the power of relentless solidarity. - Walter Brueggemann, The Spirituality of the Psalms

Jackie Robinson “returns” to Wichita. Welcome home! — Jackie Robinson

The names Hannah Coulter, Jayber Crow, and Art Rowanberry are familiar to many Wheatlanders. These are the names from the novels and short stories of the Farmer-Poet-Essayist-Novelist and gentle contrarian Wendell Berry. He turned 90 this past week and is still going strong.

If you’re new to Wendell Berry you might enjoy some of these interviews and pieces on him. Also, this edition of FTLOL ends with his poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” down below.

He has no computer, cell phone, or social media presence. Yet, VOX says — Wendell Berry is still ahead of us

Interview in Garden and Gun magazine. (Nice title.) — the Poet of Place

The On Being Podcast, with Krista Tippet, has a treasure trove of interviews and recordings of Berry reading his own poetry. I encourage you to give them all a good listen. — On Being with Wendell Berry (and Ellen Davis)

… and that is really important. Aussie theologian Michael Bird says more.

The folks at the Bible Project have a lot of material on the Psalms. As Wheatland continues its series on the Psalms, “Pray as You Can, Not as You Can’t,” you may find these videos on the Psalms helpful for your own learning. — The Book of Psalms and Psalm 1.

Chad Bird raises a great question in this great video, “Should we pray the Psalms of cursing?” What do you think? — Should Christians Pray the Imprecatory Psalms

A.J. Swoboda, theologian and pastor, teaches how to read Scripture through the tears and pain of life. It is a good reminder that God is in solidarity with those who suffer. What might we learn when we read the Bible through our tears? — Our Tears as Glasses

If you’re trying to be happy, you may be trying too hard. — Obsessing Over Your Own Happiness Makes You Less Happy

We end today with one of Wendell Berry’s best poems. It’s one I think that will speak to all of us. Read by the author with great animation. (He doesn’t have a computer so I wonder if he’s ever seen this?)

One of Wheatland’s pastors, Kelly Chewning, teaches from Psalm 51. It is really good stuff!

FTLOL is a collection of links meant to encourage and amuse. May God bless these little bits of cyberspace.

The world’s largest free bbq is happening in my hometown, tomorrow. Anyone want to join me? — XIT BBQ.

You can listen to him or read the text of his teaching on “Sowing to the Spirit.” Time spent with Dallas Willard is never time lost.

OK. What on earth could that mean? Stability is a virtue and one that early Christians understood well. — The Wisdom of Benedict

J.R. Briggs is a great friend of Wheatland. He also shares our affection for Thomas the “doubter”. Good job J.R.!

By the way, next time you see J.R., ask about his flight with Marilyn Manson’s cats.

Mike Bird, Australian biblical scholar, helps break down some of the mystery in the Old Testament about fallen angels. (But only some of it.) — Who are the “Watchers” in Jewish Literature?

In last week’s sermon on Psalm 14, (the Psalm that begins with the phrase: “fools in their heart say there is no God”) I referred to Richard Dawkins’ recently expressed affection for the cultural trappings of Christianity. He’s not alone — Elon and Christendom?

A brief article on Richard Dawkins and Cultural Christianity — Sawing off the branch your sitting on

Richard Dawkins and Mere Cultural Christianity

Also, Russell Moore’s comments on Dawkins’ recent love of Christian culture — New Atheism Finally Learns How To Destory Christianity

Here’s a brief article on one reason why cultural Christianity matters — The Christian Roots of Human Rights

Nothing could be wrong with mindfulness, right? Some recent studies explore the negative impacts of meditation and mindfulness. — The Dark Side of Meditation and Mindfulness

Paul looks at Psalm 14 through the lenses of Orientation, Disorientation, and New Orientation. These three categories not only describe the Psalms but they also help us understand the state of our faith. It’s worth asking, who is the psalmist calling “Fool!”

The vagaries of life prevented last week’s edition from hitting your inbox. My apologies. This week’s version will be a little bit longer with Bob Newhart, polygamous readers, grace-filled movies, and a grateful raccoon. Enjoy!

If you haven’t picked up Karen’s latest, I encourage you to do so. This book is great! And, the proceeds go to help women in need from the Mennonite Central Committee. Go get it! - Healing Deepest Hurts

Bob Newhart will be missed. He played a therapist on TV, and here he is, in that role, playing one of his most famous bits—Stop It! (This post is in honor of all our therapists and people helpers at Wheatland.)

Trevor Hudson has been writing about living in Christ’s company for decades. You’ll be encouraged and inspired to read this brief reflection on living in God’s presence. Here’s a snippet, “The God in whom we live and move and have our being is the Christlike God who loves every one of us sacrificially and extravagantly.” - Practicing the Presence

The guru of tidying up, Marie Kondo, says that one should only keep 30 books. My question for her is, “on the nightstand?” I prefer this author’s opinion on books and reading. — Actually, Try Reading Several Books At Once

Just for fun. Here’s my current stack.

For those of you who see glimpses of God’s work in the movies. I’d love to hear what you would add to this list — God in the movies

Check out this cool coverage of an enormous rattlesnake den. Or, if snakes freak you out, keep scrolling. — Mega-Den

This is the kind of story we need right now! One of the best examples of cross-species cooperation and friendship. Also, if you’ve ever wondered how long a raccoon will let you slap it’s back, we have an answer — Bill and Rocket the raccoon

Fat Cat Books - great teaching for kids and adults! Check them out in Wheatland’s kids' book cart on Saturday night!

A great group of J.R.R. Tolkien quotes - enough to make Nate Hansen proud.

Another angry post. When you’re tempted to let it fly on social media!

Getting out of bed as an act of worship. Sometimes showing up is 99% of the battle.

If you liked Trevor Hudson’s post, you can find more great stuff at Renovaré.

Wheatland’s Tuesday night Bible Study/Book Club has been reading the book, A More Christlike Word. It’s a fascinating book, and you can learn more about Brad Jersak’s approach to Scripture and life in Christ at - bradjersak.com

The 150 Psalms of the Old Testament are collectively called the Psalter. The Psalter is divided into five books that remind us of the five books of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In addition to that five-fold division, there are different collections of Psalms within the Psalter. One of these collections is called the Psalms of Ascent. It's found in Psalms 120 to 134.

Psalms of Ascent were named because they were prayed and sung by worshipers going up to the Jerusalem Temple. Regardless of geography or elevation, one always "goes up" to Jerusalem. Hence, the Psalms of Ascent. Jerusalem sits on a plateau, and the Temple sat on a hill. These Psalms of Ascent are also known as “Pilgrimage Psalms.”

These Psalms of Ascent are grounded in trust. Whoever composed these psalms trusted that God would act and deliver them. Despite this, however, they reflect a variety of emotions. Some are laments. The writer is grieved by the suffering of God’s people and the bad behavior of those responsible. Some of the psalms are so happy that the psalmist can't contain himself. But out of those, Psalm 126 is especially beautiful. One can almost see the psalmist with a far-off gleam in his eye as he longed for, even fantasized about, the renewal of Jerusalem and the restoration of God's favor.

Here is Psalm 126 from the Book of Common Prayer (1979) translation.

1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream.

2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.  

3 Then they said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them."

4 The LORD has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed.

5 Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses of the Negev.

6 Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.

7 Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Going to Jerusalem was an act of trust. The people who set out for Jerusalem with their sacrifices weren't perfect people with perfect lives. They journeyed to the Temple carrying emotional burdens that may be familiar to us: the grief of lost loved ones, the fear of lost crops and revenue, and the fear of the tribes and nations around the corner who wanted what they had. Normal stuff.

But there was always hope. God was going to act. Whether that action would occur on their timetable was yet to be determined. But they still believed he would. This trust is highlighted in that phrase in v. 6,

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.

Psalm 126 was probably composed when the people of Jerusalem were in Babylon. These exiles had lost everything, their city, the Temple, and everything in between. As a captive, the writer is writing about things that he knows have been lost. As far as he can tell, they no longer exist. Jerusalem, the city they would “go up to,” was just a burning stump.

The opening lines of the psalm demonstrate great faith or maybe foolishness; the writer’s hope defies reasonableness. Yet, his trust wins out. In time the Jewish captives return home, and city and Temple are rebuilt.

We rightly wonder how someone could trust in the face of such difficulty. It’s hard to say, but we do know that one way they conveyed this trust was with language from the farm. Jesus used this language, too—the language of sowing and reaping. The trust these planters had in crops coming to life aided their imaginations that, just maybe, God had “planted” them in Babylon in order to “harvest” them at the right time and “plant” them back in their own land.

Everyday life gave them the images they needed to feed their faith in dark times. Their God-given imaginations gave them visions for their future. Even now, our imaginations are altered as we pray the Psalms, even as we let the archaic imagery take root (see what I did there) in our hearts and minds.

N.T. Wright comments on the purpose of the Psalms in the Christian life. We do well to take his words to heart.

The Psalms, I want to suggest here, are songs and poems that help us not just to understand this most anceint and relevant worldview but actually to inhabit and celebrate it—this worldview in which, contrary to modern assumptions, God’s time and ours overlap and intersect, God’s space and ours overlap and interlock, and even (this is the really startling one, of course) the sheer material world of God’s creation is infused, suffused, and flooded with God’s own life and love and glory. The Psalms will indeed help us to understand all of this. But it will be an understanding that grows out of a deeper and richer kind of knowing—something that brings together imagination, insight, and love. (The Case for the Psalms)

I suspect that the kind of imagination Wright speaks of here is just what we need. Confidence born out of good and bad experiences creates a language that sustains us in tough times. Words like,

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.  

Let’s pray God would give us imaginations large enough to trust him in extraordinary times and in the daily grind.

Psalm 23 is often read at funerals. Kelly gives many reasons why we shouldn’t wait so long to hear and pray the words of the 23rd Psalm. Good stuff!

Most Bible readers find parts of Scripture puzzling. Some of these puzzling parts involve certain actions of God that don’t look like Jesus. Most of these are in the Old Testament, and Christians have been wrestling with them for generations.

In A More Christlike Word, Brad Jersak offers an approach to reading the Bible that helps make sense of the parts that don’t exactly add up. He suggests reading the whole of Scripture as if it were a parable. To illustrate this idea, he uses the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) as a lens through which we can read the rest of Scripture. This story is a cypher for understanding the Old Testament.

This section is a little long but it’s worth the time. It may provide some fresh eyes for us as we read the Bible. (I do recommend reading the Prodigal Son story first.)

Imagine that the whole Bible is simply an incredibly long version of the parable of the prodigals. And conversely, imagine that the parable is Jesus’s ingeniously brief summary of the whole Bible, distilled into short-story format. We can do this because both offer us the same gospel narrative . . . one in an expansive library and the other in a tight paragraph. So, here’s what we can do: turn the parable into imaginary walk-in closet organizer for every section, every book, and every chapter of the Bible.

That means any passage where you see rebellion, disobedience, or lostness—any story where you see the trials of Israel’s wandering, exile, slavery, or destruction—can be slotted into the younger son’s descent into the pigpen. And all of those Jewish tales of jdugment, condmentation, legalism, or “bad laws” might be assigned somewhere within the older brother’s part of the tale. The former exposes humanity’s addiction to rebellion, the latter to humanity’s demand for retribution. These are two sides of the same coin: alienation, where both boys “slaved away in the fields.”

But don’t stop there. Continue to every biblical passage where we see repentance, grace, flourishing, and celebration. All of these find their spot in the gospel of the son’s return, the father’s welcome, and the homecoming banquet in the kingdom of God. You might ask, as I did, where Jesus’s incarnation, passion, and resurrection fit into the story.

As with the Scriptures, so in the parable: look for him everywhere! Christ is that moment of clarity when the son asks himself, “What am I doing out here in this pigpen?” Christ is the impulse to return, and he is the road home. Christ is the Father’s embrace. Christ is the open door into the Father’s house. Christ is the ring, the robe, and the banquet table. And, surely, if Christ can be the Lamb of Passover, he can also be the delicious fatted Calf offered at the great feast of God. Christ is even there in the Father’s plea to the elder son: “Please, son: come inside! Join the party!”

If we were compelled to structure all of our Scripture reading into that brief narrative, we could se how the whole Bible leads us to Christ. We could see how every brick in the Bible finds its important space in the gospel road. Even the ugly bits. Further, we might see why Jesus says he did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, so that “every jot and tittle” reveals an important waypoint in our own experience as sons and daughters on our way home.

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When studying the Bible, scholars often adopt a role akin to field biologists. They endeavor to place the diverse parts of Scripture into their respective Kingdom, Phylum, and Class. This approach is quite helpful. It helps us identify the various types of Scripture. Just as a biologist might ask, 'Is this animal a mammal, bird, or a reptile?' readers of the Bible ponder, 'Is this part meant to be read like history, poetry, or prophecy?' (or something else?) Knowing the literary type of a passage helps us adjust our expectations when we read it.

In the animal kingdom, we have creatures that defy classification, like the duckbilled platypus. It belongs to a class—it is a mammal—but it has attributes that belong to the classes of birds and reptiles. It's mysterious and difficult to fit into the accepted taxonomy.

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The Psalms are like the platypus. While each Psalm can be assigned to a category, the moment we attempt to confine it within a specific category, it resists. Most Psalms exhibit attributes of others, blurring the lines between categories. There's no clear-cut boundary where one type begins and the other ends.

When creating categories for the Psalms, scholars typically use the psalm's content to distinguish it from others. Does the psalm thank God for his deliverance or admire him for his attributes? It's a psalm of praise. Does the psalm cry to God for deliverance or complain about the wicked? It's a lament. Does the psalm dispense advice on how to live? It's a wisdom psalm. These are three broad categories, but there are many more.

Walter Brueggemann1 categorizes the Psalms differently. Instead of focusing on content, he categorizes them according to use. Brueggemann asks how Israel used these psalms in their worship and prayer life. What was Israel going through, or at least the writer, when the psalm was composed?

Brueggemann's three categories for the Psalms are Orientation, Disorientation, and New Orientation.

These categories describe our modern-day experiences as well as they did Israel's. Here's a brief rundown of each type.

Psalms of Orientation are noted for their confidence. The person who prays this way sees God's faithfulness through their experience of his generosity and predictability. Sometimes life goes really well. In these moments, God may seem nearer than other times. We worship from a place of feeling cared for. Life is not chaotic but ordered and simple. Hope comes naturally.

Psalms of Orientation present the world as predictable. It is predictable because it is God's good creation. Those who do right prosper. Those who do evil are punished. And we see these happen promptly.

Psalm 1 is an example of a Psalm of Orientation. Blessed are the righteous, and cursed are the wicked. It's simple and straightforward. Psalm 162 is another good example, along with 14, 37, 131, and 133.

Psalms of Disorientation are notable for their authenticity. When a psalm begins with the phrase, "How long?" or "I cry," or "My God, My God!"3 you are probably reading a Psalm of Disorientation.

God's creation is indeed good, but sometimes, its goodness is obscured by bad behavior, tragic accidents, violence, and the natural despair accompanying it. And sometimes, life is just a grind.

It is from experiences like these that the psalms of disorientation arise. These psalms keep our prayers honest. And, quite frankly, if it weren't for psalms of disorientation we may not know how to pray at all when life is complicated.

These psalms remind us that we don't have to clean up our language, much less ourselves, before we come to God. It may sound weird to put it this way, but Brueggemann likens God to a therapist, and the psalms of disorientation are the therapy.4 Where can we share what we dare not share? To whom can we say things we are afraid to say to ourselves?

Many of the Psalms of Disorientation end with a return to praise. In the last line, you may see a phrase like, "Yet, I will praise you." The psalmist knows that difficult things have to be acknowledged but recognizes God as the good creator.

Just beyond this, however, is the experience of New Orientation. These psalms are not cynical like some of the psalms of disorientation. Neither are they naive, like psalms of orientation. Psalms of New Orientation originate in the experience of having survived the desert and been found by God on the other side. The faith of New Orientation is hopeful but informed. A grateful confidence that has its eyes open.

In the Psalms of Disorientation, the turn back to praise is abrupt and may feel forced. With the Psalms of New Orientation, the turn to praise is not dutiful but natural. Words of praise roll off the tongue, because the psalmist knows God has delivered and trusts God will deliver again. Psalms of New Orientation provide a proper confidence that is patient, self-aware, and mature.

Psalm 30, 32, 103, and 116 are excellent examples of Psalms of New Orientation.

Brueggemann's three psalm types describe how the Psalms were used in Israel. They represent the people's condition. They also represent our condition. At any given time we will find ourselves in a state of Orientation, Disorientation, or New Orientation. Maybe we notice that we live in one of these states more than the others.

One beautiful thing about the Psalms is their capacity to meet us in whatever depths or joys we find ourselves in. They give us the language we can borrow even as it becomes our own. Taking the three kinds of orientation to heart might help us in our own extemporaneous prayers and when we pray the Psalms.

We should acknowledge that the condition of our hearts is often a mix. One moment we are supremely disoriented by our life and the next we feel incredibly secure. Another moment we feel delivered and another we feel no need for deliverance. There is not one category that can contain or describe all that we are. Like the Psalms, our experiences cannot always be classified, and gratefully, there are psalms for that experience too. Like the platypus, the Psalms, and our own emotional state, defy easy categorization.

Through the Psalms, God may be a good therapist after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Brueggemann

Nathan Hansen preached a fine sermon on Psalm 16 recently. “This is my life. I want no other.”

Psalm 13, 88, and 22 respectively.

This brief video is really good. God as therapist—kinda.