God, our help and deliverer,

we thank you for rescuing us from the miry places of our lives

and placing our feet on the firm rock of faith in Jesus Christ.

We praise you for your faithfulness in the past and your promised presence today.

In those places where we find ourselves weak,

as well as in those places where we think ourselves strong,

help us to wait for you with believing hearts, trusting in Jesus our Savior. Amen.

Approach this setting with a slower tempo. The tune can carry the profundity of the psalm, but because it is so well known there is a danger of it being sung superficially and too quickly. The triplets can help to keep the tempo in check, but they may be left out according to the context. To signal the change in character at st. 3, consider singing it in canon at the measure, moving into harmony for st. 4.

This setting is one of 24 psalm settings by John L. Bell published in 1993 by the Iona Community in Scotland and available in North America through GIA Publications.  In the Introduction to that collection, John Bell writes,

 

One of the greatest slurs on the 150 Old Testament poems known collectively and affectionately as The Psalms is to call them “praise songs.” This not only shows a frightening blindness to the content of the poems, it also belittles the experience of Jesus Christ.  When, on the cross, he used the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”” was he singing a happy chorus?  .... In this era of history, when the ending of the Cold War and global awareness of international disorders have not ensured that the world is safer or less hungry, or its wealthy inhabitants more fulfilled, it may be that we have to learn to use these ancient words in ways that will ensure our present-day apprehensions and pains are offered to God as earnestly as our most exuberant praise.

 

Bell also mentioned that the Wild Goose Worship Group had collaborated with him in the writing of these very diverse psalm settings, so that the work is communal.

NEW BRITAIN (also known as AMAZING GRACE) was originally a folk tune, probably sung slowly with grace notes and melodic embellishments. Typical of the Appalachian tunes from the southern United States, NEW BRITAIN is pentatonic with melodic figures that outline triads. It was first published as a hymn tune in shape notes in Columbian Harmony (1829) to the text "Arise, my soul, my joyful pow'rs." It was first set to "Amazing Grace" in William Walker's Southern Harmony (1835).