In this bold exposition of the Psalms as the Word of God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer addresses Christians oppressed by an inability to pray. Holy Scripture itself provides us with a prayer book; we can speak to God in God’s own words and by using the Psalms, especially in fellowship with other Christians, we can participate with all humanity in the true prayer offered by the Incarnate Word. With and in Christ we pray the Psalms, confident that our prayer will be heard. ‘With these prayers on our lips we stand at the heart of the New Testament and in the fellowship of the Cross of Jesus Christ.’

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and neo-orthodox theologian who was a founding member of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), a movement within German Protestantism that arose in opposition to government efforts to unify all German Protestant churches into a pro-Nazi Evangelical church. The Confessing Church resisted the pro-Nazi Deutsche Christen movement and believed in following the Gospel teachings of Jesus without influence from any political agenda. From 1933 Bonhoeffer spearheaded church resistance to Nazism and particularly to Hitler’s persecution of Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel Prison before being transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp where he died in 1945. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential. His death is commemorated in the Church of England on 9 April.