Most of the psalms in what we now call 'Book Three' of the psalms were written at a time of national crisis. God's people had been judged and driven into exile, and it seemed that God was very far away. In some ways our own times reflect many of the concerns of these psalms, both in our personal experience, and in the life of the church, which finds itself in a society that has almost entirely rejected God. Book Three of the psalms, then, on the one hand gives us Biblical prayers to express to God at times like this, and on the other: reassurance and hope for the future in serious days.