James 24:7

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The Psalms speak for us when we cannot speak for ourselves.

Not long ago a friend dropped me an email and told me that he was so low he could not pray.  His world lay in pieces at his feet. His thoughts raced.  The words would not come.  He asked me what he could do.

I told him to pray the Psalms.

The Psalms speak for us when we cannot speak for ourselves.  Written by people lost in joy and mired in despair, the Psalms express almost every emotion there is.  The poetry of the Psalms articulates our fears, anxieties, and worries. 

The Psalms are authentic.  Nothing raw is concealed in dignity; no pain is hidden in piety.  The Psalmist falls on his face before God in sadness.  He shakes his fist in rage and pleads for God to open heaven's bolted doors.  He curses his neighbor and begs God for forgiveness and mercy.

We fear our feelings.  We ingest, digest, suppress and repress them.  We wear the false face.   As the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote in his poem...

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn, and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why must the world be overwise

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O Great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but O, the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

We forgot how to speak our pain.

Yet sometimes the world is simply too much.  Like Job's friends we are stunned by the sight of so much sorrow and we sit for seven days in shocked silence. 

When we cannot find our voice.  When the pain within us is too great to be expressed in the company of the pious or when our mouths are shut by horror, let us turn to the Psalms.

They speak for us when we cannot speak for ourselves.