The Roller Coaster of Life through the Psalms
July 2026 Sierra Story
The Nevada County Fair is coming up in just over a month — one of the highlights of our community's summer. For some it's the rides, for others the animals or the food (I always get a funnel cake). But the fair also has its share of lines, noise, and the occasional waft from the livestock area. Walk through on any given day and you'll see the full spectrum of human emotion played out in under an hour. And yet none of us would trade in the joys just to avoid the lows.
The fair is really just a microcosm of life itself. This is a theme the 1989 film Parenthood captured memorably. Steve Martin's character longs for stability and predictability in parenting. His wife, played by Mary Steenburgen, pushes back: "These are kids, not appliances. Life is messy." Then Grandma wanders in and offers an unforgettable image — life as a roller coaster, with all its terrifying drops and exhilarating climbs. Her conclusion: "I like the roller coaster, you get more out of it."
Long before the Nevada County Fair or Parenthood, the Psalms were wrestling with the same reality. The full spectrum of human experience is on display there — joy and grief, stability and upheaval, loss and renewal. Theologian Walter Brueggemann describes these as moments of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. In The Psalms and the Life of Faith, he argues that this is precisely why the Psalms have mattered to so many people across so many centuries: "The use of the Psalms in every age is for times when the most elemental and raw human issues are in play" (p. 7). Whatever moment you find yourself in on the roller coaster of life, there is a psalm that meets you there.
Beginning Sunday, July 5th, we're launching a new 10-week series called Reorient, exploring the Psalms through Brueggemann's framework. Given the disorienting season our church has been navigating, I believe walking through these ancient songs together could be an important first step in discerning what God has for us ahead.
We'll begin where many of us find ourselves — with psalms of disorientation (Psalms 6, 137, and 69). From there we'll move through psalms of reorientation (Psalms 77, 51, 13, and 85) — the hard, hopeful movement of finding our footing again. We'll close the series with what Brueggemann calls psalms of orientation, which I'll refer to as psalms of hope (Psalms 8, 96, and 107).
I hope you'll join us for this journey. The Psalms don't ask us to pretend the lows aren't real — they sit with us in them and then point us toward something beyond them. Like Grandma and her roller coaster, there's more to be gained by riding it than by standing safely on the ground. And just like a day at the Nevada County Fair, enjoying a funnel cake can make all the messy, noisy, and overwhelming parts are worth it.
The fair is really just a microcosm of life itself. This is a theme the 1989 film Parenthood captured memorably. Steve Martin's character longs for stability and predictability in parenting. His wife, played by Mary Steenburgen, pushes back: "These are kids, not appliances. Life is messy." Then Grandma wanders in and offers an unforgettable image — life as a roller coaster, with all its terrifying drops and exhilarating climbs. Her conclusion: "I like the roller coaster, you get more out of it."
Long before the Nevada County Fair or Parenthood, the Psalms were wrestling with the same reality. The full spectrum of human experience is on display there — joy and grief, stability and upheaval, loss and renewal. Theologian Walter Brueggemann describes these as moments of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. In The Psalms and the Life of Faith, he argues that this is precisely why the Psalms have mattered to so many people across so many centuries: "The use of the Psalms in every age is for times when the most elemental and raw human issues are in play" (p. 7). Whatever moment you find yourself in on the roller coaster of life, there is a psalm that meets you there.
Beginning Sunday, July 5th, we're launching a new 10-week series called Reorient, exploring the Psalms through Brueggemann's framework. Given the disorienting season our church has been navigating, I believe walking through these ancient songs together could be an important first step in discerning what God has for us ahead.
We'll begin where many of us find ourselves — with psalms of disorientation (Psalms 6, 137, and 69). From there we'll move through psalms of reorientation (Psalms 77, 51, 13, and 85) — the hard, hopeful movement of finding our footing again. We'll close the series with what Brueggemann calls psalms of orientation, which I'll refer to as psalms of hope (Psalms 8, 96, and 107).
I hope you'll join us for this journey. The Psalms don't ask us to pretend the lows aren't real — they sit with us in them and then point us toward something beyond them. Like Grandma and her roller coaster, there's more to be gained by riding it than by standing safely on the ground. And just like a day at the Nevada County Fair, enjoying a funnel cake can make all the messy, noisy, and overwhelming parts are worth it.
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