The idea for writing a book on the Psalms first emerged for me in 1988, when I led a four-week August session on the Psalms early Sunday mornings at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Portland, where I was interim pastor. I had taught the Psalms as my "Old Testament offering" (see below) in many religious contexts before that time, but the fourfold division of the Psalms and the concept of the Psalms as helping to restore healthy rhythms in personal life only emerged around 1988 for me.
From 1982-88 I taught in a number of religious contexts (in addition to my Reed duties) in the Northwest, and by 1983 I had developed a "mini-theological" curriculum I could teach in a variety of situations. For example, if someone called and asked me to teach, I had an Old Testament class ready to go (the Psalms), a few New Testament courses (parables of Jesus; the Book of Hebrews); a literary course (classics of Christian spirituality, focusing on Augustine, St. Theresa, Calvin and Bonhoeffer); a historical course (The American Religious Experience) and a theological course (the Reformed Confessions). I would also give courses on more "contemporary" books such as Megatrends, a 1980s hot-seller for those interested in "futurings" (a weird term that was christened, and that also died, thankfully, in those days). Each of these offerings could be infinitely compressible (one week) or infinitely expandable (10-30 weeks) based on the needs of the inviting organization. Thus by 1983 I wanted to portray myself as a sort of one person theological seminary. Since I was also interested in loading up my resume in those days, by 1986 I had a six-page single spaced vita, much of which consisted of my public appearances/teaching, and each entry in the resume would reflect as many as a dozen or as few as one appearance.
As I tell in 52 and Strangely Found, I wanted to begin writing books when I moved to Sterling, KS in 1990, and an opportunity to do so soon arose through a writing partnership with Glandion Carney. Our first project was to put together my thoughts on the Psalms, which had been brewing in my mind for several years. The basic concept behind the book, written in 1992 and published in Fall 1993, is that our fast-paced lives tend to get us "out of sync" with ourselves and our perception of reality. We also tend to want some kind of guidance/advice in shorter doses than Middlemarch or War and Peace. Hence was born the idea for the book: a practical, but biblically-literate, exposition of the Psalms that would be designed to establish healthy life rhythms and would do so through brief, thoughtful, practical expositions of the biblical text.
The four ideas of Longing, Distress, Trust and Praise are explained in the Introduction to Longing for God, and this four idea framework became the guiding and organizing principle of the book. We are born yearners. We long for so many things: peace, love, security, health, harmony in family, connection with others. I examined the idea of longing in three Psalms--63, 42 and 84-- in the first three chapters of the book. When we long or yearn, it is like holding our hands out to the world, trying to embrace that world. Sometimes it responds in kind, but often it takes advantage of our vulnerability, and we get hurt. We sink into distress. Then I explored nine Psalms of distress, probing the variety of losses that enter our lives with the help of the text and other literature/art. Often we wallow in distress for years; what I did not know at the time, but which became clearer to me as my writing life unfolded, is that a number of things were distressing me at the time. Perhaps that is why writing on these Psalms was always fun for me! In any case, unless we want to remain permanently in distress, we need to trust again. This may entail learning to trust God, a specific person, a category of persons (those hurt in relationships can easily identify) or even ourselves again. I selected nine Psalms of trust to probe this most difficult subject. Indeed, one of Shakespeare's most haunting tragedies, Othello, exposes the fragility of life for one who is unable to trust. Finally, I argued that learning to trust again leads to praise, an attitude of life which is grateful for the day, which affirms the rustles of life all around us, that seeks to integrate the pain and pleasure of life into a symphonic chorus of praise to God. Here again I selected nine Psalms to exposit. Thus the book consists of the text of 30 Psalms, expositions of all, and brief concluding prayers. There are also study questions on each chapter in the back of the book for groups that wanted to use this book.
By the mid 1990s I was still teaching classes on the Psalms but my four-fold framework had given way to a five-fold classification. I also developed a pnemonic for those who cared to learn it (I often wonder if anyone ever remembered anything I did or said): Longing, Losing, Listening, Loving, Laughing. What you might notice in this new five-fold rendering is that I not only add a concept ("listening"), but I seemingly have secularized the words. Instead of praise there is laughter, for example. This change in focus reflects my own increasing alienation from the religious categories I adopted around 1970, and is detailed in 52 and Strangely Found. I believe that Longing for God ought to be reprinted or updated. I think it still speaks with a freshness and intensity which I know I felt as I penned each chapter.
Longing for God: Prayer and the Rhythms of Life (with Glandion Carney; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 18-22. This is the first exposition of the book, on Psalm 63. The biblical text first appears (we used the New International Version) and then the exposition.
"In the Academy Award-winning film Amadeus there is a scene where the lesser Viennesse composer, Salieri, reflected on why Mozart's music was so powerful. He said, with a combination of jealousy and wistfulness, that what characterized Mozart's music was such a sense of longing and yearning, such an unfulfilled desire that cried out through his music. It seemed as if Mozart was hearing the very voice of God and was striving with every fiber of his phenomenal genius to express musically what he had heard from God. He wa a man who longed for another world, and his music was the result of that yearning.
The key to the life of Christian discipleship is to learn how to yearn and then to learn how to focus our yearning. A wonderful image of this phenomenon may be found in the sotry of the burning bush (Exodus 3). Moses is tending his flocks by Horeb, the mountain of God, when he turns aside to see a marvelous sight. A bush is burning, but it is not being consumed. From this apparently contradictory observation, Moses hears the voice of God calling to him. The word of God comes from the burning bush.
The bush may be symbolic of many things, but one of its meanings may be applied to us: we, like the burning bush, need to burn and not be consumed. That is, we need to burns with a desire for God, a hatred of oppression and every kind of injustice, a longing to see the word of God and the work of God performed in our generation. Yet often when I burn I am consumed, or, in the language of today, I become "burned out." I become so involved in things that I become consumed by them. I become so consumed by my desires--desires for money, prominence, sexual expression, change--that I am overcome and rendered useless.
When this happens, I have lost my balance, and I often then flee to the other extreme. I flee to indifference. I have seen how great a toll desire exacts in me, so to preseve peace and a sense of stability in my life, I withdraw. I stop longing. I lose whatever heat I had and become cold indeed. Horrible images of beatings, killings, war, poverty, illness and brokenness can flit across the television screen and I remain passive, unconcerned and inert.
The key to Christian discipleship is to learn how to burn without being consumed or, in other words, to long without being overcome and immobilized. I need to learn to maintain my fire, my commitment, my longing even when I come close to burning out. I need to maintain that fire even when entering the deep freeze of unconcern seems most inviting. I fly to the extremes of burning consumption or frozen immobility. I need help, divine help, to achieve a balance, an equilibrium, a rhythm that keeps me lonigng and burning but does not consume me. I need to keep on loving even when love has been painful, to keep on hoping even when hope has been dashed before my eyes, to keep on believing in people even after they have let me down time after time, to keep on believing in myself even after I feel I've failed at things most dear to me.
My spiritual journey, then, begins with yearning. My longing may, at first, be unfocused yearning. It may just be an ache deep within for wholeness or understanding. It may also have a greater focus to it: goals I want to reach, relationships I want to cultivate or heal, recognition I cravce and feel I deserve. So, I long. The psalm I have chosen to start these reflections is about longing. We will spend three days on longing, for unless we clarify the nature of our longings, we will be unable ot achieve spiritual balance or life-giving rhythms.
David's Longing
The first line of this psalm illumines the path of our whole journey. "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you." These ten simple words capture the essence of our initial step. First, David starts with a general cry to God. He simply says, "O God." I can't hear the tone of his voice, but it is a general cry, the plea of a heartsick and longing person who knows that salvation lies outside of himself. "O God" is a cry that I need to be able to make. It is not exactly a confession of faith in God; it isn't a declaration of discipleship. Rather, it is a call from the depths of my being, where deep calls to deep, a call that captures in its intensity all the tangled webs of my sadness, sickness and yearning. "O God" must be my first words. They come from desire. They are directed outside of myself. They can be said with desperation or anger or calmness. They need, however, to be said. Spiritual balance begins when I recognize that the first cry I make in the morning is really a cry for God. "O God" mens that I instinctively recognize that the source of my life and the fulfillment of my needs come from God. "God" takes me no further than that, but the cry gets me on the right path.
Crying for God or calling to God brings me outside of myself. I need to be delivered from the mind curved in on itself, from the self absorbed with the self. There certainly are depths of soul that I need to touch and unexplained actions or feelings that I would be foolish to ignore. But, ultimately, there is no deliverance in life through self-absorption.
If I focus my attention solely or largely on myself, the result, paradoxically, is confusion and not control. My life and my mind are to find their reference pont in their rest in God. The mind focused largely on itself is a mind tumbling out of control, like a car careening over the icy surface of a highway. It cannot stop, and it cannot control where it goes. The mind focused on itself becomes like an astronaut walking in space who for some reason has lost his tether. Thus, I tumble farther and farther toward the outer reaches of the universe with no guide, tether or way of regaining control. The way to put valuable self-examination in a proper context is to control it with daily cries to God.
Walt Whitman may have written, "I celebrate myself and sing myself," and I, too, may exalt in the wondrous complexity and grandeur of the human God has made. But I also need checks on the endless self-absorption that our culture encourages. Crying out to God will not assure that I will be immediately delivered form the pits of my despair, but it tells me that my true health is found outside of myself, in the grace and comfort of the living God.
Second, David continues with a personal cry to God: "You are my God." He makes a huge advance with these words, by willingly claiming God as his God. This is not an easy step to take. To say "God," all I need is a voice. But to say, "you are my God," I need something else. I need a sense that God can be trusted. In addition, it means that I believe God is concerned about my condition. Many people wil confess that God exists and that he even hears their cries, but fewer really believe that this God is personally interested in their lives.
What does it mean to say, "You are my God"? It means I agree that God deserves not just my cries of desperation but also my will and my heart. Another psalm captures this perfectly: "I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing' (16:2)." Saying "You are my Lord" is a willingness to stake my present and future on God and God alone. When doubting Thomas saw the wounds of the risen Christ and was invited by Christ to place his hands on them, to attest to their geniuneness, Thomas could only say, "My Lord and my God!" (Jn 20:28). These powerful words capture two distinct acts: I cry out to God. And I put my trust in God.
Third, the psamist says, "Earnestly I see you." These words fit perfectly with the preceding, because they give a direction to my will. I move from trust to seeking God. I now have not only a step on the path but also a direction; it is the direction of seeking God. Not only do I cry out to God and express my trust in him, but now I tell the world and my soul and God that I am seeking him. I trust him and I seek him. Trust may be compared to putting one's weight on a boat, while seeking is actually turning on the engine and setting out in the desired direction. I am now pointed in a direction, and I am ready for guidance.
I have spent a lot of time on the first ten words of Psalm 63 for two reasons: first, I am convinced that new worlds of understanding are sometimes contained even in small portions of a verse, and second, I feel that the three ideas of general cry, specific trust and seeking God make up the first step to regain my spiritual rhythms. The remainder of the first four verses of Psalm 63 build upon the themes already mentioned. The weary and thirst psalmist faints for God. He, no doubt, faints also for water and rest, but the reality of his physical condition directs the nature of his spiritual quest. He remembers when he was in the sanctuary of God (v.2), and the memory of that time is so powerful that he says, "your love is better than life (v.3)." Surely something has happened to the psalmist in the past where the goodness of God was evident to him. Now the mere memory of it brings songs of praise to his lips. He even lifts up his hands to God. He is worshiping in the desert. Amid threatened death and ardent pursuit, where one needs to lie low, David lifts up his hands to God. "How foolish," one might say. But David trusts in God, and he is not ashamed or afraid to show it in any way.
I then conclude my chapter with a section entitled "The Yearning Fulfilled," an exposition of Ps. 63:4-8 and "God's Protection," a short consideration of the final verses of the Psalm. This is the first of 30 expositions.
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