Penitential Psalms Quotes

There's a reason Psalm 51 is the best known of the Penitential Psalms and one of the best-loved psalms of all. It speaks to the deep pain we feel inside us when we sin, and then it shows us the mercy of God. His is the love of a Father who sees his child's stricken face - washes the tears away - and then reaches inside to create in us "a clean heart;" to breathe "a new and right spirit" within us. ~ Sarah Christmyer

To Father Rothschild no passage was worse than any other. He thought of the sufferings of the saints, the mutability of human nature, the Four Last Things, and between whiles repeated snatches of the penitential psalms. ~ Evelyn Waugh

It was not unusual to be called Son of God in ancient Judaism. God calls David his son: "today I have begotten you" (Psalms 2:7). He even calls Israel his "first-born son" (Exodus 4:22). But in every case, Son of God is meant as a title, not a description. Paul's view of Jesus as the literal son of God is without precedence in second Temple Judaism. ~ Reza Aslan

When children ask you questions about gray hairs, and wrinkles in the face, and sighs that have no words, and smiles too bright to be carved upon the radiant face by the hands of hypocrisy
when they ask you about kneeling at the altar, speaking into the vacant air, and uttering words to an unseen and in an invisible Presence
when they interrogate you about your great psalms, and hymns, and anthem-bursts of thankfulness, what is your reply to these? Do not be ashamed of the history. Keep steadily along the line of fact. Say what happened to you, and magnify God in the hearing of the inquirer. ~ Joseph Parker

But like the crusaders, who in the name of piety had carried out that dreadful massacre in Jerusalem, there were many citizens who failed to hear in those penitential sermons a call to mend their ways, and instead learnt to hate all those who didn't share their faith. ~ E.H. Gombrich

If you're feeling pain, express that to the Lord. If you're feeling worried, express those worries. One passage that gives me comfort is in Psalms, Chapter 11, verse 3, it reads, "When all that is good falls apart, what can good people do?" That's really the question of the day. ~ Max Lucado

The Psalms draw a hard and fast distinction between the righteous and the wicked, something that is not appreciated in a period of religious syncretism. ~ Kevin Swanson

Be still and know that I am God
-Psalms 47:10 ~ David

According to Benedict's scheme, the community reads through ... the entire book of Psalms every week. The monks are therefore exposed ... to all the despairing, doubtful, bitter, vindictive, jingoistic, nationalistic, and seemingly racist passages in the Psalter. It is not that every sentiment expressed by a psalmist is admirable, but that in praying the Psalms, we confront ourselves as we really are. The Psalms are a reality check to keep prayer from becoming sentimental, superficial, or detached from the real world. ~ Richard H. Schmidt

The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. He prayed the Psalter and now it has become his prayer for all time ... we understand how the Psalter can be prayer to God and yet God's own Word, precisely because here we encounter the praying Christ ... because those who pray the psalms are joining in with the prayer of Jesus Christ, their prayer reaches the ears of God. Christ has become their intercessor ... ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Offices rerooted me in a tradition where, monk or not, I would always be at home. From long ago I knew the power of their repetition, the incantatory force of the Psalms. But they had an added power now. As a kid, the psalmist (or psalmists) had seemed remote to me, the Psalms long prayers which sometimes rose to great poetry but often had simply to be endured. For a middle-aged man, the psalmists' moods and feelings came alive. One of the voices sounded a lot like a modern New Yorker, me or people I knew: a manic-depressive type A personality sometimes up, more often down, sometimes resigned, more often pissed off, railing about his sneaky enemies and feckless friends, always bitching to the Lord about the rotten hand he'd been dealt. That good old changelessness. ~ Tony Hendra

God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering. ~ Christian Wiman

American Psalms challenges Christian patriots to put aside personal agendas, prejudices and partisanship, and pray for our leaders as God commands. ~ Mike Huckabee

By praying "his" prayers - the Psalms of the Old Testament, which Jesus prayed - we effectively piggyback on them all the way to heaven. ~ Eric Metaxas

I find in the Psalms much the same range of mood and expression as I perceive within my own life of prayer. ~ Reverend Malcolm Boyd

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water (Psalm 63:1). We may imagine we want a thousand different things, but God is the one we really long for. His presence brings satisfaction; his absence brings thirst and longing. ~ Randy Alcorn

But the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). God and His Word, in essence or essential nature, is truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalms 5:5; 33:4; 105:5; 119:151, 160; John 1:17; 14:6; 16:13). Many Christians consider all truth as God's truth, yet they will look to other sources beyond the Bible. However, the only reliable source of truth is God's inerrant Word, the Bible (Psalm 18:30; John 8:31-32; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). All other sources are fallible and cannot be used as the measure for truth. ~ Paul Smith

Psalms 46:10 tells us to "Be Still and Know that I am God." ~ Rhonda Jones

Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names. ~ Victor Hugo

The Psalms do not, that is, offer us an answer for "the problem of evil." But they are clear where the answer is not to be found. It is not to be found where the pantheist wants to find it, suggesting that "evil" is merely a matter of our perception and that the world just is the way it is and we should get used to it. ~ N. T. Wright

Music is to be praised as second only to the Word of God because by her all the emotions are swayed. That is why there are so many songs and psalms. This precious gift has been bestowed on men alone to remind them that they are created to praise and magnify the Lord. ~ Martin Luther

I am Psmith," said the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, and phthisis. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: 'Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms,' says he; 'I wish to be a little angel here below;' he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety. ~ Charlotte Bronte

In HEATHEN, R. Flowers Rivera remixes the classical and the Biblical, the usual and the typical until what we thought we knew of ourselves and others is new again. The mythic becomes particular; the particular becomes mythic in these fascinating poems of personalities and personas. Rivera's work is rich in empathy and invention. Heathen is a book of psalms for the present day. ~ Terrance Hayes

Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all ... There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of Mohammed] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim! ~ Ruhollah Khomeini

John Calvin called the Book of Psalms 'an anatomy of all parts of the soul.' All the range of emotions are expressed; the Psalms weave an emotional fabric for the human soul. These inspired lyrics take us by the hand and train us in proper emotion. They lead us to emotional maturity. ~ Kevin Swanson

It is not a gathering of 'escapees' from the world, bitterly enjoying their escape, feeding their hate for the world. Listen to their psalms and hymns; contemplate the transparent beauty of their icons, their movements, of the entire *celebration. It is truly cosmical joy that permeates all this; it is the entire creation - its matter and its time, its sounds and colors, its words and silence - that praises and worships God and in this praise becomes again itself: the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, the sacrament of the new creation. ~ Alexander Schmemann

I cannot see how it can be argued that one should speak in tones of reverence and awe about the alleged divine instruction-in Psalms-to grab the defenseless bodies of innocent infants and dash their brains out against the nearest rocks or walls. ~ Steve Allen

The more I come to recognize my story's place in God's grander Story, my once-bewildered questions are turning to psalms of thanksgiving at the wonder that I have been included in what He is doing. ~ Gloria Gaither

You have to find that place that is very quiet in your head, and anytime I read it, anytime I come across it, my Bible, the first Scripture in there is Psalms 91. ~ Ray Lewis

What's so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as they're being gospel and songs of praise, they are also the blues. ~ Bono

PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The loss of psalmody in the church is one of the early indicators of the loss of faith. ~ Kevin Swanson

Do you read your Bible?" "Sometimes." "With pleasure? Are you fond of it?" "I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah." "And the Psalms? I hope you like them?" "No, sir. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Come, let us sing a psalm, and drive away the devil. ~ Martin Luther

Someone remarked that the newspapers or the news magazines are the same as the psalms except that the names changed in the stories. Maybe you can't understand the psalms without understanding the newspaper and the other way around. ~ Corita Kent

Psalms 46

10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. ~ Anonymous

That which was published in the Law, the prophets, and psalms before "God was manifested in flesh"
looks forward to Jesus the Christ; what was published after Christ's ascension looks back to Him as "the Lord God of Israel" who "hath visited and redeemed His people" (Luke 1:68). ~ Tim Liwanag

God your love is so precious! You
protect people in the shadow of your
wings. Psalms 36:7 ~ Anonymous

A social order bent on producing wealth as an end in itself cannot avoid the creation of a people whose souls are superficial and whose daily life is captured by sentimentalities. They will ask questions like "why does a good God let bad things happen to good people " such people cannot imagine that a people once existed who produced and sang the psalms. If we learn to say "God " we will do so with the prayer "My God my God why have you forsaken me? ~ Stanley Hauerwas

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. ~ Psalms 139