Psalmic Struggles

The Psalms have always been hard for me to pray. I have prayed the 51st on and off for a few years and it is the one I know best. This is not to say it is my favorite. I find the ones that contain a lot of natural imagery about God's glory to be my favorites. "Night speaks to night..." or something like that. Psalms like the 51st, that focus on repentance, are less immediately stirring to me. Hard-heartedness I suppose! I do not doubt, at least when I am being clear-headed, that my transgressions have been blotted out, but it usually takes some mental gymnastics to feel this feelingly. I get the feeling that it is more helpful, more prayerful, to just confess my boredom with the 51st and move onto something that requires less of a puppet show. And yet, I can't ever seem to dispense with it(Pharisee anyone?).

I read somewhere that when Christ enters the soul, or enters the world, natural imagery seems empty and beside the point. There is really something to this. Christ is the Word, the link between the objects in nature and their ultimate meaning in God. When that Word becomes flesh how could he not show the inadequacy of all of these symbols at expressing the true meaning behind creation? And yet, temperamentally, I like thinking in symbols and finding apt metaphors for things. I have a feeling that my love of the Psalms involving God's glory as seen in nature is at root a desire to find a prayerful place for my love of symbols. I wonder though if I might not benefit from struggling to make my appreciation of the repentance Psalms a little more heartfelt. But, of course, that is not the point. Repentance, not literary appreciation, is the point. I would like (wouldn't we all) to more honestly pray to the image shattering One behind all the images. How to remove the obstacles to this? I guess I could pray about it.