The Psalms: Songs of Exile

Saturday, March 28, 2026

Sunday
It was during this devastating period of exile and return that much of the oral tradition known to Christians as the Old Testament was either written down for the first time, or reedited and compiled.
—Brian McLaren

Monday
In this psalm, the refugees in exile refuse to sing. Their pain echoes through the centuries and asks us: Where are people experiencing exile today?

Dare we humanize them and feel their pain? Dare we take their story seriously—even if doing so offends the elites of today’s empires of violence and domination?
—Brian McLaren

Tuesday
The present disorder is our time of exile and has solidified in us an urgent commitment to our work of action and contemplation. It seems needed now more than ever before!

Grounding social action in contemplative consciousness is not a luxury for a few, but surely a cultural necessity.
—Richard Rohr

Wednesday
When lovers of the Bible glibly refer to the Bible as “The Word of God,” without also taking seriously the reality that the Bible is also the testimony of human beings in great pain, they can find themselves unintentionally rendering God a monster.
—Brian McLaren

Thursday
The psalms are not used in a vacuum, but in a history where we are dying and rising, and in a history where God is at work, ending our lives and making gracious new beginnings for us.
—Walter Brueggemann

Friday
The psalmist proclaims, This is the reality of the Lord’s government, the beloved community, over and against all oppression and exploitation.

Through it, we humans are restored to what was always intended: My life He brings back; Our lives He brings back.
—Diana Butler Bass

Week Twelve Practice
The Songs Jesus Knew

Musician Richard Bruxvoort Colligan describes how the Psalms are woven throughout the New Testament, and can continue to speak to us today:

The Psalms are the songs Jesus knew by heart. When I sing them, I like to imagine I’m sitting with him and his circle. Given the references to the Psalms in other books of the Bible, it seems the New Testament writers may have felt the same.

Reading what amounts to psalmic hyperlinks into their texts, we can notice the vital connection across Testaments to our heritage of faith. Modern readers, therefore, are part of something ancient.

Whatever faith looks like (or doesn’t) for you these days, the psalms are robust soil in which you can sink your deepest roots….

The psalmists sang about everything. Joy, grief, and facing the unknown are dimensions of what Jesus called the “abundant life” (John 10:10), and these 150 ancient songs can startle us with what we see of our world and lives reflected back in their mirror.

They sing of ecology, theodicy, political corruption, justice work, personal crises, national tragedies, forgiveness, and death. And we’re invited along for the ride. In their musical soundtrack, we can hear and see our own world, in which spirituality and meaning are spun through everything.

As Psalm 145 sings, the covenant pattern of God’s presence stretches everywhere.

Because the psalms tackle such a vast range of issues, immersing ourselves in them today can help us to examine what we’d like to separate, and to integrate those pieces into our reality; it’s the work of integrity.

This is not the sort of thing you want if you’re looking to hang on to grudges, avoid your nation’s impact on the world, or fight against unfailing love. It is, however, for all of us who are ready to honestly examine our minds (and the world’s) contradictions, paradoxes, and complications and bring them into one experience.