sermons
Praying with the Psalms
At Home in Your Life
Steve Watson
Jan 04, 2026
This past week I was watching Cover Up, the new documentary about the work of Sy Hersch. And then I heard one of my kids speak up with a question. He was like:
What’s going on with all these angry men?
I was surprised to hear him ask this because I didn’t think he was watching. I thought my son was doing something else on the other side of the room. But parents, they’re always watching, they are. But I was also surprised because I was noticing something else. I was paying attention to Sy Hersch’s courageous investigative journalism – exposing government cover-ups of a Vietnam war massacre, of political and corporate corruption, of military wrongdoing. I was admiring that he loves his country enough to hold people accountable for the standards we say we have as a country. And in fact, the first thing my kid said was, hey, it looks like Dad has a new hero. Maybe not, but I was admiring this journalist and his ministry of truth-telling.
But then my kid asked:
What’s going on with all these angry men?
He asked it as they were telling the story of Abu Ghraib, the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war by United States military and CIA officials. Immoral, illegal, violent, brutal behavior by citizens of this country at war.
There’s a lot going on in this story besides anger, and the offenders in this case were not all men either. But still, I think my son had an important question, one that matches his own lived experience as well – what’s going on with all the angry men? The majority of violent crime is committed by angry young men, and a lot of our politics in this country are being driven by angry people – maybe especially angry men – of all ages.
What’s up with all the anger?
Now I’m just a pastor. I know better than to try to answer big questions like this about our world, but I know I’m curious about them. Because I think we’re a country that doesn’t know what to do with most of our big emotions – we have so much fear, so much anger, so much sadness, and we really don’t know what to do with it all.
Maybe that’s not unique to this country. Maybe it’s our whole species. To be a human is to have so much love, so much longing, so much joy and beauty. But to be a human is also to have so much loss, so much envy, so much anger and despair, that we often have no idea what to do with it.
I feel like our world, our culture, our religious lives, our habits and instincts often go in one of two directions with our big emotions, particularly with our so-called negative emotions.
We sometimes try to go around them. Don’t talk about them. Pretend they are not there. But when we bury our feelings, we always bury them alive, and so like zombies, they keep rearing up in unpredictable, inconvenient ways. How much of men’s buried shame shows up as reactive, defensive rage. How much of all our buried fears show up as anger or despair. So going around them – not so ideal.
The other thing we do is just accept them. Like, oh well, I guess I’m an anxious person, and that’s the way it’s going to be. Or I’m just angry, so I’m going to need to cut out of my life the people that make me sad or angry.
Now friends, don’t get me wrong – some of us have chronic mental health challenges with depression or anxiety or other conditions that produce challenging emotions. And I’m not going to talk about professional mental health care today, but I have other times. And it can be so very helpful and important. I also think radical acceptance of our true emotions and inner life is critical for our well-being. Critical – it’s one of the two things I’m commending to you today. But by itself, it’s not always enough. We also need ways to engage our emotional lives that can help us not get stuck with the hardest parts of them.
And I think healthy faith offers a third path, different from going around our emotions or only living with them as they are.
I think healthy faith can help lead us toward a beautiful path of radical acceptance of our lives as they are, and all the emotions they provoke, while also giving us paths of good faith engagement that can lead to steady transformation.
I’m going to read a poem in the middle of the Bible’s prayer book called Psalms. They’re known to us by their numbers, this one Psalm 42. And we’ll go from there.
Psalm 42 (Common English Bible)
42 Just like a deer that craves streams of water,
my whole being craves you, God.2 My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God.
When will I come and see God’s face?3 My tears have been my food both day and night,
as people constantly questioned me,
“Where’s your God now?”4 But I remember these things as I bare my soul:
how I made my way to the mighty one’s abode,
to God’s own house,
with joyous shouts and thanksgiving songs—
a huge crowd celebrating the festival!5 Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed?
Why are you so upset inside?
Hope in God!
Because I will again give him thanks,
my saving presence and my God.6 My whole being is depressed.
That’s why I remember you
from the land of Jordan and Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.7 Deep called to deep at the noise of your waterfalls;
all your massive waves surged over me.8 By day the Lord commands his faithful love;
by night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.9 I will say to God, my solid rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I have to walk around,
sad, oppressed by enemies?”10 With my bones crushed, my foes make fun of me,
constantly questioning me: “Where’s your God now?”11 Why, I ask myself, are you so depressed?
Why are you so upset inside?
Hope in God!
Because I will again give him thanks,
my saving presence and my God.
Friends, can you picture what’s happening here? Someone’s out walking in the scrubby, dry forest and sees a deer in the distance. It looks tired, maybe a little emaciated, but it bends down to this tiny little stream where it gulps and gulps and gulps until it has the energy to keep going.
And the person thinks –
that is like me. I am so tired, so worn out.
Call it upset, sad, depressed, whatever – the psalmist uses all these words. But they see that deer, and they think – that’s me. So thirsty.
Friends, I’m sure many of you can relate. I know how this feels too.
In November, one of you did the most beautiful little thing. You were speaking with me one on one, in a relatively private space. Small talk, you know, and then you said:
you know, Steve, I might be wrong, but you seem like maybe you’ve been down lately.
And I said:
yes, that’s true.
And before I could say more, you said right away –
I know there can be a lot of reasons to be sad, and you’re a pastor of my church and there are probably things you can’t share here too because you interact with a lot of people’s sadnesses, but I just thought I’d ask and let you know I’ll be praying for you.
And that was so beautiful, to be seen like that but without the pressure or expectation to share any more or less than I wanted to, and I think I just said:
thank you. Thank you, I feel really seen and cared for.
And you said to me:
this church is important to me, and you’re important to me, so I’m glad to pray for you.
And sometimes that phrase: I’ll pray for you feels like a throwaway line, a little empty gesture, but this was super meaningful. I’m very grateful.
I have my reasons for the big feelings I feel. We all do. In the case of the psalmist, we get to hear about some of them, hinted at at least.
In their case, they are facing significant opposition. Could be personal, professional, cultural or national. But there are enemies mentioned. There is mention of people that look at the condition of their life and think – it looks like God has abandoned this person. What a fail.
Some of the Psalms are traditionally attributed to ancient Israel’s second king, a man named David son of Jesse. And in the story of David’s life, there are two different times he has to leave his home and workplace in Jerusalem to be in exile – one due to what we might call a professional rivalry and the other for very personal and tragic problems within his own family.
And maybe this Psalm hints at these stories as it mentions Jordan and Hermon, these places off to the East across the Jordan River, as if the psalmist is far from home, maybe literally, maybe metaphorically.
Because failure, sadness, resistance from others, depression, despair – they can literally drive us away from places that felt like home. Or they can drive us away from feeling at home and at peace in our own lives.
And I know that almost all of us can relate to facing intimate personal losses or professional losses that impact our feelings, maybe impact our reputation.
This little Psalm names so much, hints at so much more, that I turned to it late last year as I was reckoning with my life. I mostly reflect and pray in this little spot in my home, but that day, I needed a change of scenery and wanted to visit a little chi chi cafe and spend some time with myself and this psalm over an overpriced croissant and cup of coffee. Turns out the cafe I had in mind was closed that morning, so I went to the local McDonalds instead and splurged on a $3 breakfast burrito so I could have some time with Psalm 42 and my troubles.
Every place on earth can be a holy place. Even a McDonalds. And every place on earth can potentially be a place to pray and to be at home in our lives at home with God. The Spirit of God is here for all of us, everywhere, all at once.
And friends, what so helped me that morning with this Psalm were two things.
It was validating, permission giving. That even some great spiritual giant who wrote the prayers that are preserved in our Bible can lose faith and despair. So it’s OK, if I can sometimes too.
And the psalmist isn’t trying to go around their emotions or bury them. Radical acceptance. The psalmist in fact gets curious about their emotions.
Why, I ask myself, are you depressed? Why, I ask myself, are you upset?
In my teens and twenties, I used to read this wrong. I thought it was like:
What’s wrong with you? Why are you upset? God is good, get on with it.
You can tell I’ve talked to myself that way. You can tell, probably, that I’ve talked to people I love that way before. That’s no good, and it is not what the psalmist is doing.
Here we have radical acceptance, and deep curiosity. God cares how we feel, and we can care about it as well.
So I sat in that McDonalds, praying with this psalm, and I asked myself:
Steve, why are you upset?
And it’s not like I didn’t know already, but it helped to take an intentional moment and write down the reasons. And there were several. They matter to me.
But as I did that, praying with Psalm 42, I noticed the psalmist did a couple of things in addition to the radical curiosity. The psalmist names the depression as thirst and as a hunger for God.
And I found that very helpful. I felt – I’m not just looking for a fix or a solution or an end to what it upsets me. Maybe I am. And I’ll do what I can, but there’s a lot I can’t control. But I remembered with the psalm. I’m looking for companionship in these things. I’m looking for perspective and help, for someone to hold these with me. And I have a spouse and friends and a pastor who helps me do that sometimes. But I’m also looking for God – for awareness that the spirit of love and life is with me too.
And something else the psalmist was doing helped me as well.
When the psalmist gets curious about their big emotions, they are curious about the sadness, but they also get curious about times when things have been different. They turn to the past – I remember that time my life was so full of joy! And they even turn to other parts of the present – I know these hard things are not my whole life. There are signs that God still loves me. Sometimes at night I am aware life is good, God is good – they say poetically, at night God’s song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I love that language.
Anyway, I thought to myself – when in the past have things been different for me? And in some cases I did not have to go back very far. One thing I’ve been troubled about was very different not that many months ago.
- And I found myself thinking about other parts of my present – where in my life is God’s song of goodness with me?
- What are the stories of favor, blessing, abundance?
- Where is the love?
- What is making me happy?
- What am I thankful for?
And stuff came to mind, important stuff.
And friends, this praying with the psalm helped, a lot. It gave me encouragement, perspective, and hope in that particular moment of prayer. And it gave me a posture to keep coming back to again and again.
The hard parts of my season are not my whole life, they’re just parts of it. And this season is not my whole life, it is a season. And like the psalmist, if I know that God has been good in the past and that God is still good in the present, I can believe that God will be good again in the future.
And that helps me keep the faith, keep the faith in God in particular, but keep the faith in the abundance and goodness of life – life in general for sure, and my life in particular, since our own lives are the only ones we have.
This is why I keep coming back to the psalms to help me pray. Not every day, but most days, I sort of skim read two or three or five psalms, looking for a line or two or three that calls out to me and I can make my own. And that’s why we’re starting this year for a few weeks with teachings on Sunday on Praying with the Psalms.
I do this because my faith teaches me to. For Jews and Christians, for Jesus and for so many of his followers over the past two millennia, the Psalms have been a prayer book.
I look at more than one per day, because some of them annoy me. I run into things in the Psalms sometimes that feel like propaganda. Sometimes they say things about God I don’t think are true. Sometimes they say things I don’t relate to at all.
But on the whole, they are so permission giving. There are prayers of joy and gratitude and celebration and relief and comfort and peace. And there are prayers of sadness and loneliness and anger and complaint.
And there are times in the Psalms where it seems like God is helping, whereas as this psalm says, God is present, is saving us all. I felt like that in the McDonalds as I prayed with this Psalm, and I have persistently felt that since then as well.
But then there are other times in the Psalms where nothing’s moving yet – where there are hard feelings and hard questions right now, and that’s all. Because this is part of life too. Keeping the faith includes seasons where we just can’t make meaning out of things yet, and things aren’t changing at all, as best as we can tell.
I was going back late last year through some old files, as we were trying to get rid of some stuff in our house. And I came across my notes and papers from when I was in seminary – religious graduate school – 25 to 30 years ago. And friends, I did some shaking of my head, I tell you. When I read some of the things I thought and believed in my twenties, I thought:
who was that man?
And it’s OK to disagree with our former selves – that shows we’re alive and we’re changing, and some changes are bad, but some are great.
But I came across some gems too, like these notes from a Bible class about the Psalms. I wrote this down:
“People who pray the psalms learn contentment and quiet peace. Because people who pray the psalms learn to be at home in their own house. They are clear with God about who they are and are patient with the process of growth. They trust that God’s plan and vision are not rooted in our perfection but in God’s love.”
Radical acceptance, friends, at home in our own house. So good.
And then I also wrote:
“People who pray the psalms have also learned to be home in God’s house. They discover that God is not fundamentally against who we are but fundamentally for us. That God is pulling for us more than we know, so we can keep turning to God in all things.”
Good faith engagement with our lives, and the God who is for us.
This after all is what the Bible means when it encourages us to continual praise of God. Not bypassing our emotions or putting a happy bow on everything. Certain not constant, uninterrupted religiosity, like singing church songs every moment – not practical or appealing.
But again and again returning to the truth of our lives while we hope and remember and believe that God is with us, that God is for us, that God is pulling for us, and that we can live the whole of our lives with our face turned toward God – whether it’s a happy face or a sad one, a grateful or an angry one. Parents know that we’d rather have our kids turn their face to us than turn our back to us. And the same is true with God – so grateful to know us and to love us and to have us tell the truth about our lives to God, whatever truth we see at this moment. And see if God has some more truth to share with us as well.
So we can be at home in our own house and home in God’s house too, since they’re the same place after all.