Our Hearts Wait

Worshiping Through Praise and Lament in the Psalms (Walter Brueggemann Library)

By: Walter Brueggemann, Davis Hankins - editor

Narrated by: Adam Verner

The Walter Brueggemann Library brings together the wide-ranging and enlivening thought of popular biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann over his storied career. Each volume collects previously published work on a biblical theme that has deeply informed Brueggemann's scholarship.

In Our Hearts Wait, Brueggemann meditates on the emotional range of our longings and gratitudes in the psalms, revealing how this bold outpouring of our full selves to the divine has effects far beyond introspection. He traces how the language of the psalms offers a template for liturgies that shape not only our collective worship and communities, but the worlds they create and sustain.

Throughout this exploration of the psalms, Brueggemann shows listeners how the language we use in worship performs what it proclaims. It nurtures and challenges us in seasons of orientation and praise, disorientation and grief, reorientation, and thanksgiving—bringing our full attention to each experience in its turn. But in doing so, the words and deeds of worship can also sharpen our awareness of social constructions and relationships that undergird our common life. They reveal power imbalances and uneven distributions of resources, and, if we let them, urge us forward in our efforts toward justice.

©2022 Walter Brueggemann; Series preface, editor’s introduction, and reflection questions Copyright 2022 by Westminster John Knox Press (P)2022 eChristian

Powerful insights about the Psalms and worship

Powerful insights into the Psalms and what they have to say for contemporary Christianity, particularly worship.