So Much More than Beautiful Poetry

"Still Today the Old Testament book of Psalms gives great power for faith and life. This is simply because it preserves a conceptually rich language about God and our relationship to him. If you bury rich language about God and our relationship to him. If you bury yourselves in Psalms, you emerge knowing God and understanding life. And that is by no means a matter, as some suggest, of the "poetic effect" of the great language. No mere emotional lift is chiefly its picture of God and of life. We learn from the psalms how to think and act in reference to God. We drink in God and God's word from them. They provide vocabulary for living Godward, one inspired by God himself. They show us who God is, and that expands and lifts and directs our minds and heats." Dallas Willard The Divine Conspiracy