World Turned Upside Down: The Psalms and the Spirituality of Pain; Finding a Way Through
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
There are no simple answers to life’s challenges, so how do we integrate our most testing experiences into our faith in a way which strengthens rather than undermines it? When we are at our weakest, when we feel we most need God and yet have no idea how to talk to him, it is the Psalms which leap to our rescue.
With the psalmists as our guides, we learn to draw closer to God, to hear his voice in fresh ways, and to identify what it is that troubles us. Borrowing their words, we find that we are able to articulate our most painful feelings and walk through suffering with honesty, hope, and confidence in the God who travels beside us. Here is an opportunity to read the Psalms differently: an invitation to embark on a new journey.
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- Invites to use the Psalms to articulate our most painful feelings and walk through suffering.
- Helps to learn how to draw closer to God with the psalmists as our guides.
- Guides to hear God’s voice in fresh ways with the psalmists as our guides.
- 1 Making sense of life
- Psalm focus: Psalm 23
- 2 An anatomy of pain
- Psalm focus: 107, 88
- 3 Who am I?
- Psalm focus: 139
- 4 Who is God?
- Psalm focus: 74, 29, 8, 125, 136
- 5 Connecting with God
- Psalm focus: 65, 104, 147, 148
- 6 Travelling with God
- Psalm focus: 22, 78, 105—106, 135—136, 77, 90
- 7 A difficult conversation
- Psalm focus: 119, 51, 32, 35, 109, 23, 63
- 8 Putting things right
- Psalm focus: 81, 50, 7, 37, 94
- 9 A long walk in another world
- Psalm focus: 100, 150, 137, 126
- 10 Coming home
- Psalm focus: 110, 121, 30, 138, 131
As ever, Alison Morgan manages to convey a wealth of academic study in a deeply personal and accessible way. In this hope-filled book she applies the Psalms to the reality of every-day life and shows how they can help us express our own thoughts and feelings to God as well as listen to his response. Along the way she tackles issues such as meaning, lament, identity – and especially pain which, like fire, can ‘burn or refine’. In her own poetic language she illustrates the poetry of the psalms which ‘demands to be felt more than thought about’ and expresses what it feels like to be human. ‘World Turned Upside Down’ is practical as well as inspirational. It points to the way in which the Psalms can help us to grow through our suffering rather than be crushed by it, and includes moving and profound meditations on creation and death. This book is all about looking at life differently, and its message could hardly be more apt in today’s culture: namely that, however hard it may sometimes be to believe, ‘God is sovereign, and God is with us’.
—Bishop James Newcome
Written with great insight and compassion, this deep dive into the Psalms is a much- needed book, at a time when suffering has come home to so many. Alison Morgan deftly explores the many ways in which the ancient poetry of the Psalms can speak into our own lives, so that we really understand what it means to say of these scrip- tures that “deep calls unto deep”.
—Malcolm Guite, poet and life fellow of Girton College, Cambridge
This book is stunningly beautiful: as filled with light and shadow, and with energy and life, as the Psalms that form its subject and have power – so Alison Morgan argues – to turn things on their heads. But this is a book that is also felt. Alison “sees and sings” these ancient biblical songs, by mapping them onto the here and now of her own and others’ lived experience – and she does so with a visceral intensity, that invigorates the senses and discovers meaning in the sights, sounds and textures of places. This is a remarkable book, that brings memory, experience and theology into play with literature, art, music and even neuroscience, and does so with the lightest of touch and the sharpest of wit. It will surely inspire even those who have known the Psalms all their lives, as well as those for whom they are new or less familiar.
—Professor Clare A.P. Willsdon, History of Art, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow
- Title: World Turned Upside Down: The Psalms and the Spirituality of Pain; Finding a Way Through
- Author: Alison Morgan
- Publisher: Bible Reading Fellowship
- Print Publication Date: 2023
- Pages: 240
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9781800391666, 1800391668
- Resource ID: LLS:WRLDTRNDSPRTLPN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-04T15:56:10Z
Alison Morgan (Revd Dr) has written widely on literature, theology and the Christian life. She is an Associate of the Mathetes Trust, where she oversees the Rooted in Jesus discipleship programme for Africa, now in use in 19 countries. Alison has a PhD from Cambridge for her work on the Italian poet Dante, and in her spare time enjoys birdwatching, walking and photography.