Of the 150 psalms that have come down to us in the canon of Holy Scripture, there are more psalms of lament that any other genre. Because lament is the most deeply felt of all human experiences, we must voice it or risk falling into despair. Only then can movement toward praise begin. As liturgical scholar Kathleen Harmon has said, “We cannot authentically praise God until we have named our suffering.”
It is my hope that this collection will encourage the musician to explore aspects of one’s own journey from lament to praise. The hymn text incipits under the titles suggest an approach to each setting through that particular lens. When we open our hymnals in worship, we may then experience these sacred texts with an understanding that emerges from our personal encounter with a given hymn. And as we sing together in worship, we are strengthened as members of the body of Christ, as we say in the familiar post-communion prayer, “in faith toward God and in fervent love toward one another.”
