Psalms For All Seasons

Dare to expect a new world through the power of prayer. That is the challenge offered by Psalms for All Seasons. John Craghan says that by praying the Psalms, you will discover radical newness in your life as you align your heart with God's will. The psalms are prayers of both praise and lament. They fill us with confidence and consolation. They teach us to be thankful and wise. Psalms for All Seasons explores fifty-five of the most beautiful psalms in the Bible. The author's deft analysis places these ancient prayers squarely in contemporary times. By examining the structure, vocabulary, and themes of the psalms, he engages each example as a stunning prayer for the twenty-first century. This careful revision of the 1993 edition relies on the New American Bible, Revised Edition, and provides solid biblical scholarship to support the use of the Psalms in study and prayer.

This indispensable volume is the most comprehensive resource on the Psalms for use in Christian worship ever published. It offers a single-volume anthology of psalm use, covering the history, reception, and practice of the Psalms in Christian worship. The book contains all 150 psalms, most in multiple formats, and utilizes a wide variety of musical and spoken settings. It also provides complete musical settings for morning and evening prayer. Each psalm appears in its actual biblical text, including as responsive readings. This invaluable resource for churches of all traditions is well suited to congregational use, helping pastors, worship leaders and planners, and choirs bring the Psalms back into the heart of congregational worship.

Psalms for All Seasons explores fifty-five of the most beautiful psalms in the Bible. The author's deft analysis places these ancient prayers squarely in contemporary times. By examining the structure, vocabulary, and themes of the psalms, he engages each example as a stunning prayer for the twenty-first century. This careful revision of the 1993 edition relies on the New American Bible, Revised edition, and provides solid biblical scholarship to support the use of the Psalms in study and prayer. (back cover).

This book is one of the most comprehensive resources on the Psalms for use in Christian worship. It covers the history, reception, and practice of psalm use and contains all 150 psalms, most in multiple formats. For each psalm, this volume includes: the complete New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) text of the psalm, presented with alternating regular and boldfaced type for responsive readings and red markings that enable the chanting of the psalm; a Christian prayer that responds to a theme, imagery, or basic intent of the psalm; a brief footnote which identifies the psalm's genre or type, highlights significant features of its form or imagery, and suggests a range of uses in Christian worship; one or more settings of the psalm, most of which are musical settings for congregational use. This range of material means that the book is well-suited to a variety of uses: corporate worship -- to be placed in the hands of worship leaders, choirs, and, ideally, all worshipers; daily prayer at morning, noon, evening, and/or night; personal and family devotion; a resource for Bible study; for preachers, as a commentary on the book of Psalms; to inspire composers in a wide range of cultures and traditions to imagine new, vital, and faithful ways of rendering psalms. Psalms for All Seasons is well suited for use in worship and practical theology courses. It is also an invaluable resource for churches of all traditions, assisting clergy, worship leaders and planners, and choirs in bringing the Psalms back into the heart of congregational worship. - Publisher.

The Psalms: Language for All Seasons of the Soul brings together essays from eighteen Old Testament scholars discussing the latest in Psalms scholarship and applying exegetical insights to the life of faith. These essays explore the full range of emotion expressed in the Psalms—from elation to distress—while weaving together observations from biblical scholarship and theology. The reader will gain valuable insights into how the Psalms speak to his or her soul. The book is divided into five sections that: Give an overview of Psalms studies in the 21st century Discuss psalms of praise Explore psalms of lament Look at the big picture of the Psalter as a book Present sermons on the Psalms that are models of evangelical engagement with the text. A Select Bibliography for Psalms Study is included at the end of the book.

"The accompanying CD features oral readings by Seerveld ... interspersed with select versification melodies played by solo recorder or saxophone."--Page 4 of cover.

William L. Holladay offers an illuminating and informative overview of the Psalms, chanted, sung, and recited by so great a cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) through the past three thousand years.