How often do we pray, bringing our concerns, our worries, our fears to God? How often do we bring our joys and celebrations to God?
The book of Psalms is an inspiration and a resource to us in this endeavour. It’s able to give a voice to those laments, joys, complaints and celebrations that fill our days, our lives.
What we often fail to recognize is that the book of Psalms is also a book of hymns. It can be sung, not just recited, prayed, memorized. Like our own hymnbooks, and our favourite playlists, each of us claims the entire range of human emotion, and we sing. We sing together, we sing in the car, we sing in the shower, but we sing.
We become more fully human when we live into the full range of our emotions, giving it all to God. All our life’s experiences, both positive and negative, find balance in our prayer lives and in the example of the psalms. It’s only when we give it all to God that we can be supported and guided by God through the Holy Spirit.
How often do we pray? Daily! Every day we are able to sing to God, praise God, complain to God. Every day God hears us, and the Holy Spirit responds.
Gracious God, to you we pray in this and every day. Amen. —