One our aims at Christ Church during 2014 is to learn to use the Psalms more effectively as a resource for encountering God. The Book of Psalms is the Bible’s hymn book and within its 150 individual psalms we see an amazing mixture of praise, petition, lament and complaint. What unites all of this seemingly diverse material, however, is the conviction that God is not a remote deity but actively involved in every aspect of the world’s existence.
Learning to read, pray and perhaps even sing through the content of the Psalms can therefore lead us a far more active engagement with the presence of God within the time, space and matter that are part of our everyday lives. They also encourage us to be honest and pour out to God the things that we struggle with rather than assuming than he is distant and unconcerned. It is for this reason that the Psalms were totally central to Jesus’ understanding of his calling and why he quoted them so often. During May and June various psalms will be preached on at the 9.30 and 11.00 with the aim of encouraging all of us to engage more fully with this amazing resource that we have been given for encountering the living God.
