Keeping Faith with the Psalms
Deepen Your Relationship with God Using the Book of Psalms
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- $27.99
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
Explore your spiritual life. Create a personal theology. Challenge and
test your faith—all using the Book of Psalms.
The Book of Psalms has been beloved by generations of readers. It offers solace in times of trouble, holds out hope for rescue and redemption, and helps to answer some of the difficult questions raised by faith. The Book of Psalms is more personal than other books of the Bible; instead of telling stories with God as the central actor, the psalmists talk to—and about—God.
Keeping Faith with the Psalms leads you into the Bible to discover ways you can use the Psalms to shape your own personal spiritual outlook. Daniel Polish does not give any simple solutions, but reveals how you can discover answers for yourself through the Psalms. You will explore:
Meeting God in Nature Finding God in Torah Finding God through the Historical Experience of the Jewish People The Problem of Evil in Our World Facing Our Mortality Finding Our Relationship with God Jerusalem as Symbol and Reality What Does the Lord Require? The Call to Social Justice
Through the threads of meaning, questions, and perspectives offered in the psalms themselves, Rabbi Polish’s guide offers an intimate look at the issues that touch and influence your personal theology.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With the Book of Psalms as a guide, Polish offers Jewish readers a workbook to construct their personal theology. In this sequel to Bringing the Psalms to Life, Polish presents the Psalms as a resource to refine an understanding of God and to shape a religious worldview. "Psalms is more like our own faith experience than other books of the Bible," he posits. "Belief is not 'steady-state': unwavering and unchanging." The Book of Psalms, he says, often talks in "questioning tones rather than in terms of certainty." Quoting generously from the Psalms, Polish applies their wisdom to perplexing religious questions: How do we know God? What makes a life righteous? How do we deal with mortality? The idea of an afterlife? The book is divided into three parts: the quest for God in nature, Torah and history; the quest for insight in grappling with dilemmas like the problem of evil; the quest for commitment in living a life of faith, through acts of social justice and devotion to Jerusalem. Each chapter opens with a Yiddish poem (translated into English) that evokes that chapter's theme. Though readers might not regard questions of faith as "intimate and immediate" issues like those that arise from personal crises, they are "every bit as compelling and fundamental to our lives," says Polish. This is a book to peruse not lightly but with great concentration if the texts are to offer messages for our lives.
