The psalms take us through the full gamut of human experience and show us the ambivalent quality of our dedication to the highest. We too are the victims of our emotions and their prisoner also. Only occasionally we are privileged to escape the vicious circle of cause and effect. This occurs when our minds and hearts are lifted up to God. Then at last can we discern what is real and imperishable in a world where outer appearance is the god that governs the lives and actions of its creatures. The movement from the temporal to the eternal is accomplished in contemplative prayer, but until this contemplative awareness is part of our daily life, we will slip back insidiously into the prison of outer appearance.

The Old Testament, except for Daniel 12:2; 2 Maccabees 7:9-36 and 14:46; and Wisdom 3:1-9 (all of which are late writings, dating from less than 200 years before the Christian era), has little to say about the life beyond death, even though the Psalmist, as we have seen, does occasionally yearn for an indissoluble union with his Creator. This somewhat materialistic outlook is, in fact, less unspiritual than appears at first sight. The more we grasp for proof of survival of death, the more tantalizingly ambivalent does the evidence show itself. The person who is most convinced about personal survival is the one who is so fully about his Father's business that he has no time for selfish aspirations. As Dante wrote in the Paradiso section of The Divine Comedy, "In His will is our peace." When love fills our souls, we have already passed from death to eternal life, to paraphrase 1 John 3:14.

There is indeed only one life, which is eternal. Worldly existence, death of the physical body, and life in the greater world beyond that death are all part of the pageant of eternal life as pertains to our small but important experience on the solid earth. Those who are in touch with their own identity know inwardly that they are immortal; it is what we do with that immortality that matters, for it can as easily be a prison as a delight. In God our immortality thrusts through the time barrier and enters eternal life now, rather like a vigorous bud bursting through the protecting whorl of sepals to reveal its petals, the beauty of the open flower.

When we read the psalms we may think of the bud just about to burst into bloom. This event was the incarnation of Christ, who came to fulfil the Law that could as easily be a prison as a way to joyful living, if it were obeyed to the letter while its spirit was denied. St Paul says, "Love cannot wrong a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilment of the law" (Rom. 13:10). As we read the psalms, we should think with compassion on the various writers who were struggling with the problem of personal and national misfortune in the face of a caring, powerful God. In the end the problem is not to be solved rationally (by debate or by punishing the wrongdoer). It has to be accepted as a fact of mortal life, and offered to God in prayer. It is then that love enters our heart and a new life opens up for us. This is our introduction to eternity.