Psalms of Reorientation and Hope

‍Psalms of Reorientation and Hope            

Psalms 30:1-3, 5, 11-12

June 14, 2026   Psalms: A Song for Every Season                    

Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church, San Rafael, CA

1  I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.

2  O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.

3  O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.

  5 Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

 11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever. 

            New Revised Standard Version

1  I give you all the credit, God - you got me out of that mess, you didn't let my foes gloat.

 2 God, my God, I yelled for help and you put me together.

3 God, you pulled me out of the grave, gave me another chance at life when I was down-and-out.

  5 The nights of crying our eyes out give way to days of laughter.

 11 You did it: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers.

12 I'm about to burst with song; I can't keep quiet about you. God, my God, I can't thank you enough.

                        The Message

We have entered the month of Psalms.  And as prayers, they are not all the gentle ones we like to pin to our fridge. There are psalms for the whole range of human experience.

    Angry? There’s a psalm for that! 

    Sad? There’s a psalm for that!

    Feel like you’ve lost your faith completely?  There’s a psalm for that!

    Want to jump out of your skin with infectious joy and bottomless gratitude? There’s a psalm for that!

  Being chased down by your enemies and your life is on the line? There’s a psalm for that!

Looking through a spiritual lens, Walter Brueggemann describes three basic types of Psalms that come from and address the human experience.  They are Psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation.

The first group – Psalms of Orientation, talk about the goodness of God, God’s direction for how life is to be lived, and God’s good creation.  They celebrate the stability and trustworthiness of live and the world God has created. They are Psalms that remind us that God is good and God is love.

That’s lovely, but what about when everything falls apart and all you thought was trustworthy seems not to hold? There’s a psalm for that!   The Psalms of Disorientation rage and lament and grieve and vent and seek answers.

And then there’s the move of our death and resurrection,  God who takes us from the ashes of the old and opens us to new life, freedom, and hope, with Psalms of new orientation. These are the prayers that accompany us when a deeper relationship to God, new eyes to see, heart opening ,  the world and ourselves begins to take shape.

Psalms of New Orientation or Reorientation. In some ways they are a return to where we began, except that after disorientation there is no going back.  These prayers of the specific goodness of God who saved them from specific trouble, prayed by those who’ve been through death and come out the other side. And they give God complete credit.

There is this inexplicable moment in the Psalms of Reorientation, when the Psalm goes from anguish and despair suddenly to gratitude and effusive praise for God’s salvation.  Sometimes that’s because the person or community is healed from sickness, released from bondage, defeated an enemy army,

Other times the circumstances don’t actually change at all –their reputation isn’t suddenly repaired or their power returned to them, but something has shifted.  They are brought from oppression to freedom, even in the midst of a difficult situation. 

In either case, the credit goes to God.  And what is called for in the moment is gratitude.

These are songs of grace.  Psalms of new orientation can’t come on their own.  They are only the new life after the death, the new story after the old.  They are what is born after what has been lost.  A different kind of trust, a new kind of spiritual life -  one that has been tested and formed, let go and given back as a gift. 

Many are directly related to struggles in the Psalmists’ own lives. But many look back to specific acts of God’s deliverance generations earlier, such as God bringing their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt five hundred years before. Retelling God’s faithfulness then becomes a way to celebrate and recognize God’s faithfulness now. 

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,

            and did not let my foes rejoice over me.

O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.

God is the one who acts.  Of course, looking back, we are much more sure that God will act than we might have felt in the moment, but that is our prerogative.  It makes us change.  The action of God is so powerful and transformative that not only does it change the present and gives us a new future, it changes the past too.  After we have come out the other side, the story that has changed us changes. 

Let me give you an example of this. While I’ve had a lot of wonderful jobs, and plenty of tolerable jobs, I have also had jobs in my life that sucked the life out of me.  One was selling Xerox machines during one summer while I was in college. Cold calling.

I needed to stay in Eugene and make money that summer. I felt trapped - my soul slowly being sapped.  I felt stuck, but I needed the money.  Only lasted for the summer.  Quitting or getting fired – don’t actually remember. Also a wilderness time before I was called to serve here.  Trusting God in those moments.  Did I learn valuable skills?   Conversations mattered.  Being authentic mattered. 

God used the experiences to make me a more genuine human, a more attentive noticer,

 We don’t just belong to God, we also belong to each other. Your story is part of the story of God.  It is the story not of one who did it all on their own, nor is it the story of one who lost it all.  It is the story of one who has been given a new life, new beginnings. 

There is not just one Psalm of New Orientation.  This happens over and over, throughout our lives.  We all have Psalms of new orientation inside us.  Many, many of them.  We just don’t know how to sing them, or haven’t thought to.

Let’s do it anyway. Let’s imagine God is always more present, more available, more engaged.  Let’s practice with each other waiting patiently when we’re in the pit, and when we’re delivered out of it, rejoicing unabashedly and telling about it.

And let’s practice listening and receiving each other’s stories, being the people who believe you when you say you experienced God.

Can you seek out a time in your own story when you felt lost, or stuck, or dead, and newness came, the Spirit moved, nudged, woke us up. hope was born where there was none, and quite apart from anything you could have cooked up?

I invite you to take this moment to look back on your life and seek out times of God transformation.  Look for your own stories – that show you who God is & what God does. 

I was…              Then God…            I give thanks to the Holy One, who…

‍ ‍May our eyes and heart be opened, transformed, reoriented.  Amen.

‍ ‍Resources

‍ ‍https://kara-root.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-life-well-lived.html

‍ ‍https://kara-root.blogspot.com/2019/09/telling-stories-that-change-us.html   

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