This book is a true gift. Ryan and Dan lead readers through honest reflection and prayers inspired by the Psalms. It is rich and transparent, which is hard to find these days. I value authenticity and humanity in spirituality and my relationship to God. Using the Psalms as a guide to prayer is perfect to recognize the divine and the humanness, the beauty and the pain, the darkness and the light.

Dan Wilt and Ryan Smith have teamed up to lift the first seventy-five psalms off the pages of your Bible and into your prayer life. I encountered Sheltering Mercy shortly after having prayed my way through the Psalms, and it felt like discovering fellow travelers on a hopeful road.

I began by reading the entries for the psalms I know best. Connecting those much-loved words with Wilt and Smith’s renderings revealed each psalm anew in its refreshing honesty.

Viewed through a New Testament lens, the psalms clearly magnify Christ. Received as an invitation to personal prayer, they open a window to praise and offer a gritty script to the desperate. Praying scripture may be the strong medicine needed by 21st-century believers who have become perfunctory in our prayer life.

The final chorus of Psalm 75 exults in the presence of the Divine Author behind all the psalms’ human authors. God gives joy for the heart and strength for the soul. Praying the psalms reminds our hearts that God’s relentless presence is every bit as real today.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Brazos Press for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

I'm wild about the concept. The original psalms are journals about human emotions. What better way to interact with them than responding to them emotionally. Than praying with them. This book offers prayer responses to the first 75 psalms. I'd recommend sitting with your Bible and this book on a daily journey through each one.

I hoped that these "free-verse prayer renderings" would be inspiring or impactful. Mostly, they were underwhelming. I think I've reached the point in my faith journey where I'm more interested in hearing from people on the margins, on learning how they read and respond to scripture.

I've never come across anything quite like Sheltering Mercy. It's a gentle read, thoughtfully written, and it gets five stars from me.

The authors described the book not as paraphrase, a commentary or a translation—but as a prayerful response that mirrors each psalm in tone and content. The following is a short excerpt from the Introduction, and I'd say they accomplish what they set out to do:

"The prayers contained in this book (covering the first seventy-five psalms) are the fruit of our labors. They are not translations or paraphrases. Neither of us pretend to be qualified for such a task. Rather, they are responses—prayerful, poetic sketches—written in harmony with Scripture. We’ve taken to calling them free-verse renderings, which is just another way of saying they are impressionistic poetry without the limitations of meter or rhyme. Imagine a painter roaming the countryside who, stumbling upon a hidden valley, scrambles for her canvas and paints in an attempt to capture the vista before her: the rocky hillsides spilling down into a meadow of green and violet, the sun straining through the clouds to scatter its golden light across the scene. The painting that results is not the valley itself, but an impression of it—an attempt (however feebly) to harmonize with its beauty. We have attempted to do something like that here. The psalms are holy ground, and these prayers are lyrical paintings of what we have seen, heard, and felt while sojourning there."