I have to admit, I sometimes struggle to pray with the Psalms. Some are lovely and joyful with wonderfully poetic expressions of the greatness of God. Some seem kind of irrelevant for prayer purposes; Psalm 45, for example, seems to be a description of a royal wedding. Others call for horrible curses upon the enemies of the psalmist. Psalm 109 asks that God make the unnamed opponent suffer and die: “May his children be orphans, and his wife be a widow.” Psalm 137 infamously prays that God make Judah’s Babylonian captors suffer: “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against a rock!”
Not exactly something I want to associate with God, those expressions of human rage and grief.
But that humanity is also part of what gives the Psalms their literary power. The Psalms give expression to the full range of human emotion, from profound awe and joy down into the depths of deepest despair and anger. This shows us a way to give all those emotions to God and a reminder that we don’t carry them alone; not only does God bear them with us, but our siblings in God’s family have shared those feelings with us in their own ways from the very beginning of time. We’re not alone, and we have permission to feel our full range of feelings, and the Psalms help remind us of that.
The Psalms also remind us that God is with us always. Nearly all of the Psalms of lament, in which a person complains that they are suffering in extreme ways while lions wait to eat them and their friends (surely former friends???) mock them, end with an expression of trust in God. I know you will put this right, God, the Psalmist always concludes. I know you are with me and I praise you with my whole being. And maybe that trust was more aspirational than definite for the person who originally prayed the Psalm, but that feels relatable too.
— Rev. Toby