Forty Days with the Psalms

INTRODUCTION
Why read the Psalms?
The Psalms have been in continuous use in public worship and
private devotion for nearly 3,000 years. This fact alone should tell us
something about how useful they can be to us as we seek to
communicate with God. What we find in the psalms are honest
expressions of human emotion: hopefulness, grief, anger, fear,
resentment, joy and gratitude. They also offer us an accurate portrait
of what it means to be human, in all our weakness and sinfulness,
and yet blessed and loved by God.
The Psalms provide us with a right understanding of who God is, in
all his majesty and power, as the one to whom we should take all our
problems and from whom we should expect a response. In fact, there
is no hesitation about reminding God of his promises and declaring
that sometimes his answer seems to be taking too long. Such
frankness makes them an excellent resource for those of us who
want to learn more about how to pray and how to trust God.
In the Gospels Jesus quotes the psalms more often than any other
book in the Old Testament and in the letters of the New Testament,
the psalms are quoted more often, also. Clearly the psalms were on
the lips and running through the mind of Jesus and his followers – an
incentive for us to make them a part of our daily prayer discipline.
How are the psalms arranged in this booklet?
Each day, for forty days, psalms are assigned for morning, noon and
evening reading; sometimes more than one psalm is assigned for
each time of day. By the end of forty days the entire Psalter,
consisting of 150 psalms, will have been read.
Psalms assigned to the morning are those in which praise and
thanksgiving to God, for who he is and what he has done, are a
prominent feature. This is a good way to begin the day – with praise
and thanksgiving to our God who created us, redeemed us and who
sustains us in every way.
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