Some of the Psalms were intended to be sung during a journey, when people would travel up to Jerusalem for one of the festivals. These are the Psalms of Ascent.

Others were songs that helped people move emotionally and spiritually through times of grief, loss or suffering to renewed faith and hope. These are the Psalms of Lament.

The Psalms do help us to move along in our spiritual journey. That is probably why they are so loved, and so close to the heart of readers of Scripture.

We get stuck – we encounter obstacles to our faith, we experience griefs of many kinds, we go through painful experiences that make us feel distant from God.

We sometimes journey in circles – we are so busy and yet our paths in life are not always purposeful.

We get tired: sometimes exhaustion hits us and we become resigned to life, we give up, we quit the race before we have finished.

We can become content with our lives, comfortable with what we have achieved, and so we settle before we are home.

We can get trapped in life, ensnared by sin and in need of deliverance to complete the journey.

The Psalms help us to continue the journey. They begin where we are spiritually; they name our condition of need. Then they move us towards hope and renewal.

Usually during Advent we read prophecies of the coming Messiah, especially from Isaiah. We are used to readings of promise and fulfillment. This year will be different. We will read Psalms, and they do not predict the coming of Christ, or describe the birth or life of Jesus. Rather they describe the condition of our hearts, and point us to hope in God's salvation.

We begin with Psalm 25, which begins, "To you, O Lord, I life up my soul" The Psalm gives an honest view of what is in the heart: fear, longing, shame, discouragement – the brokenness of our lives that we carry in the heart. Then the Psalm moves this state of the heart towards the promise of God, towards salvation, towards hope.

The Psalm thus moves us to the light of Jesus Christ, the Song of God, the gift of God, Jesus our Savior.