Psalm 102-104 are brief, but powerful, psalms, totaling 85 verses. The phrase “Praise God” (or some similar variation) is found 12 times in these passages. And that’s just that phrase, not the verses describing why God is worthy of praise, which make up the majority of the text!

Much of the praises today are focused on God’s compassionate character as the Creator of the world and everything in it. The praise is focused on God’s works, and forgiveness, despite humanity’s faults. Even in Psalms 102, where the author is lamenting over their life circumstances, they still give praise and recognition to an eternal and compassionate God before the psalm ends!

Most Psalms have all these similar themes of praise and recognition of God’s character, just phrased differently and from different perspectives in different life situations. They are not written to recount a story from long ago like most of the other books in the Bible, but are written by people experiencing very real, raw, emotions. It’s basically like reading someone’s personal prayer journal! Because these authors were real people, there is a strong likelihood you resonate with their real feelings of real life situations. And because we praise an unchanging God, we can have confidence that we too, can experience the same comfort and joy when we praise Him. No matter if you are in a time of lament, a time of needing redemption, or a time of awesome recognition of our creator, you can find a way to Praise Yahweh.