The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. | Psalm 23:1–4
This Sunday, I got to guest preach at Roots Church, covering for a pastor who is on sabbatical. While he is away, a variety of pastors will be preaching from the book of Psalms, so I decided to use this first week to introduce the book. My favorite breakdown comes from Walter Brueggemann, who suggests that the Psalms are given to us to help us navigate through three phases of life: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. This cycle, from one to the next, can be seen in the individual Psalms, throughout the collection, and in our lives. We are continually finding our rhythm, shocked by the reality of life, and then restored by God – as He draws us to Himself and shows us reality as He created it to be.
As I prepared this sermon, I considered these steps primarily on a personal level. I remembered all of the times that I thought I had life figured out, only to suffer disillusionment and difficult situations, and how God had used all of these to help me know Him better. My life is a record of this cycle.
As I got up to preach, I saw people looking back at me who had gone through this as well. While this was not the church that I currently pastor, many of the people there are people I had in congregations in the past. As I saw them, I thought about how we had walked through this process together. There were people who had dealt with broken marriages, health issues, and relational tension. I remember the moments of deep disorientation they had each felt in those times where the world seemed like it was crashing down.
They did not stay there. Just as the Psalms give us a path toward reorientation, God had walked each of these people through their own process of finding Him in the midst of the darkness. To stand up and declare to them that God has provided a way back to peace and blessedness was not just a theological statement, but a recognized pattern. It was not just a hope for the future, but the way that God had acted in their lives. The Psalms was a reflection of their lived experience.
It was a blessing to be able to encourage them to not only use the tools that God has given for restoration, but also, to remember what he has done in their lives to prove this. We don’t just need a bunch of theological head knowledge to be smart about God, we need God. We need a Savior who is with us through all of the ups and downs of life. Good news is: this is exactly who He is!