| PSALMS |
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| The psalms show tremendous variation, reflecting the many personalities who contributed their poems and prayers over several centuries. Yet readers have found an inner consistency in the whole book, so they can move from one psalm to the next without being particularly aware that one poem is centuries older than another. Some have called the psalms a Bible within the Bible - different books telling a single story. Others have compared the book of Psalms to a beautiful cathedral built over centuries. Each wing and each window show the individual genius of its designers, yet all the parts are somehow harminious. This harmony comes not merely from a common sense of style, but from unity of purpose: the whole cathedral is made for the worship of one and the same God. Just so, the psalms reflect, in a hundred moods and experiences, the never-changing reality of a strong and loving God, who cares for his people. The Presence of Real Enemies God is not the only reality in the psalms. Equally persistent are enemies who sneer and hurt and plot violence. They, too, appear in nearly every psalm. For the psalmists, faith in God was a struggle against powerful forces that often seemed more real than God. The psalm writers frequently asked, "Where are you, God? Why don't you help me?" Despite their love of God, they often felt abandoned, misused, betrayed. They found no guarantee of safety in their closeness to God. The joy and praise that saturate these prayers came, not from an absense of problems, but from a deep conviction that a great God would overcome them. Jesus, dying on the cross, twice expressed himself in the words of psalms (22:1 and 31:5), and his disciples, in |
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