Published on
June 1, 2005
A sample service of lament from the Calvin Symposium on Worship based on Psalms 42 and 43.
Worship Service

Theme of the Service

Prelude

The Lord Be with You

 Ron Rienstra

Welcome

Orientation

Call to Worship

Psalm 98:1-3

Celebration

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

 Psalter Hymnal 253
Forever Chris Tomlin
Adoration Psalm 145:13-16
Great Is Thy Faithfulness Psalter Hymnal 556
Prayer

Disorientation

Lamentation

"40" (U2 song sung with images and words of lament displayed from around the world)

Prayer

God of life, God of comfort:
alone,
afraid,
in fear,
in loss,
we cry out:
"Why, O Lord, why?"
"How long, O Lord, how long?"
We cling to you in hope
even as we grasp for hope.
So grasp us in your loving embrace
through Jesus Christ,
who endured the cross for our sake. Amen.

Reprinted by permission from The Worship Sourcebook, © 2004, CRC Publications

Proclamation

Scripture reading: Psalm 42 and 43 (read responsively with refrain Hear Our Prayer)

Tanya Riches
Sermon: A Means of Escape

Intercession

"Be Near" (Shane and Shane song sung & danced)

choreographed by Eunbee Ham

Reorientation

Thanksgiving

Psalm 116: I Love the Lord

Sing! A New Creation 227
I Worship You, O Lord Psalter Hymnal 30
In Christ Alone Keith Getty & Stuart Townend

Celebration

Psalm 18:1-3
I Will Call Upon the Lord Michael O'Shields

Blessing

Benediction

My Friends, May You Grow in Grace

 Sing! A New Creation 288

Postlude

"[In the Psalms], the prayers for help, the songs of praise for help, and the songs of trust reflect a movement from helplessness through salvation to gratitude and to the life of trust based on the experience of salvation. . . The movement is the basic pattern of the Christian's relation to God through Christ."

~ James Luther Mays, The Lord Reigns: A Theological Handbook to the Psalms
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994), 42.

The language of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation is drawn from the work of Walter
Brueggemann, in The Psalms and the Life of Faith, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1995), and The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984).