I have never understood exactly how the beautiful pictures overlaid by these snippets from the Scriptures fit together, but I do enjoy them.
This section of Psalm 143 is priceless. Luther said of Psalms in general –
In many Churches the Psalms are recited or sung antiphonally every Sunday, or even daily. These Churches have preserved a treasure of incalculable value, for only through daily use do we grow into that divine prayer book. If we read them only now and again we shall find these prayers so overwhelming in thought and power that we shall always want to turn back to lighter fare. But anyone who has begun to pray the Psalter regularly and in earnest will soon have done with his own easy, ‘trifling little devotions and will say: Ah, here there is none of the sap, the strength, the fervour and fire that I find in the Psalms, this is too cold and hard for me.’
Luther referred to the penitential psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) as “the Pauline psalms” for the way in which they “take us to the very depths of what it means to acknowledge our sin before God, they help us to confess our guilt, they direct our whole trust to the forgiving grace of God.”
