When we think of singing, we often associate it with emotions and events that are happy, joyous, and good. But music and songs encompass the full spectrum of human emotion and experience. There are songs of victory and overcoming, but also songs of defeat and suffering. There are songs about joy and sadness; peace and conflict; loving-kindness and anger; abundance and longing. I think of one of my favorite bands, U2, and how I could find a song that corresponds to each of these. Music is diverse in its expressions, genres, and purposes—and the same is true of the book of Psalms. It was the prayer book and songbook of the Israelites, Jesus and the early church.

Songs for the Summer invites us into the breadth and depth of the Psalms, the human experience, and God’s steadfast love that endures through it all. “God is.” This is the foundation of the Psalms. Just as Genesis begins with “In the beginning, God,” the Psalms begin with the fundamental reality of God’s presence—and not only God's existence, but God's invitation to engage with us in a wide range of human experiences. God invites our praise and lament; our joy and tears; our confident declarations and our fears; our love and even our accusations; our faith and our doubt. In the Psalms, God welcomes all that we feel, think, and experience in life. God welcomes us—our whole selves.

In this sermon series, we will explore specific Psalms, sometimes lingering in a theme that connects several Psalms over a few Sundays. While we could spend nearly three years walking through each Psalm individually, we will instead focus on a few key themes that help us appreciate the wide range of what the Psalms offer us in our relationship with God.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann classifies the Psalms into three broad categories:

• Psalms of Orientation, which speak of the character of God as Creator and Sustainer, and evoke our delight and joy in response to God’s goodness.
• Psalms of Disorientation, which include lament and complaint, and speak to the pain, brokenness, and evil that plague human life.
• Psalms of New Orientation, which “speak boldly about a new gift from God, a fresh intrusion that makes all things new. These psalms affirm a sovereign God who puts humankind in a new situation.”

These three categories will roughly guide our exploration as we consider themes like God’s
goodness, lament, complaint, longing, justice, the wonder of creation, gratitude, and praise.