So I’ve been stuck in Psalms for months. Not because I don’t love Psalms (I do), but because I was trying to do something different with this blog, and it didn’t really work.

I was trying to list and count all the emotions I identified throughout the book of Psalms.

But in the end, it meant having my phone with me as I read and as almost all my reading happens when I’m settling the kids, and it’s not good to try and settle children with phone light in the room, I just… stalled.

And then I realised that if making a list was preventing me from reading the Bible, which it was, I’d very much missed the point. If I want to carry on with that list another time, I can. But to let it stop me reading scripture was really stupid.

So here are the emotions I identified in the book of Psalms, all the way to Psalm 105.

Praise, thanksgiving & worship (63), faith & trust (55), joy & gladness (36), distress, sadness & grief (28), fear & panic (25), love & comfort (25), hatred, anger and wrath (22), loneliness, abandonment & rejection (20), hopefulness & longing (12), tiredness and weakness (10), shame (9), repentance (4) and envy (4).

A Psalm, as I have said in most of the funerals I’ve ever taken, is an ancient song. There are 150 in the Bible. As you can see above, they contain a huge range of human emotion. Some are short, some are long. Some are easy reads, some are challenging. And some contain verses we love so much that for a time, all of our passwords were based on that verse.

Favourite verse: Psalm 139.14: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.