My favorite points from it:
- Be thankful for our fellow Christians, that we are not physically alone in our faith.
- Those psalms that we feel we should not pray for ourselves, we can pray through Christ (for example, the imprecatory psalms, or those claiming innocence).
- Oetinger arranged psalms “according to the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer” (49).
- The right way to read scripture aloud is not as an actor reads a dramatic script but as one reads a letter from a friend (55-57).
In addition, he doesn’t like any hymn singing that calls attention to itself or detracts from unity; hymns are group prayers (57-61). And he’s very pro-work: “the bulk of the day belongs to work” (70).