On certain days a psalm will invite us to pray what we feel in the moment—need, joy, gratitude, hope, fear, anger, doubt. On other days a psalm will invite us to pray despite our feelings of the moment. They will invite us to pray, that is, in faith. They will invite us to choose to talk to God even when we’d rather be doing anything but that. To pray in these two ways is to cultivate the virtues of sympathy and empathy.
