In All Seasons, God

Walter Brueggemann changed the way people read the Psalms. Brueggemann (pronounced Brew-ga-mawn) introduced three kinds of Psalms: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation.

If there are too many syllables in the previous description, think about it like this: Psalms of life, death, and renewal.

While most Psalms are either one or the other, Psalm 23 actually contains these three movments. Psalm 23 is a renewal Psalm, but it shows the reader how the three seaons must be held in tension with each other.

Seaons of Life:

1The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
3he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Seasons of Death:

4Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
5You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Seasons of Renewal:

6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

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In the fall of 1963 one preacher articulated these seasons of life as well as any thinker has in modern times.

May I now say a word to you, the members of the bereaved families? It is almost impossible to say anything that can console you at this difficult hour and remove the deep clouds of disappointment which are floating in your mental skies. But I hope you can find a little consolation from the universality of this experience. Death comes to every individual. There is an amazing democracy about death. It is not aristocracy for some of the people, but a democracy for all of the people. Kings die and beggars die; rich men and poor men die; old people die and young people die. Death comes to the innocent and it comes to the guilty. Death is the irreducible common denominator of all men.

I hope you can find some consolation from Christianity's affirmation that death is not the end. Death is not a period that ends the great sentence of life, but a comma that punctuates it to more lofty significance. Death is not a blind alley that leads the human race into a state of nothingness, but an open door which leads man into life eternal. Let this daring faith, this great invincible surmise, be your sustaining power during these trying days.

Now I say to you in conclusion, life is hard, at times as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and difficult moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of the river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. (Yeah, Yes) Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. (Yeah) And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him (Yeah, Well), and that God is able (Yeah, Yes) to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Eulogy for the Martyred Children)