Address to God in the Bible and in human life generally moves back and forth between plea or petition and praise or thanksgiving. In that movement, one is at the heart of what prayer is all about. The Biblical story as a whole and in many of its parts may be charted along that movement also. It begins in human address that is the cry of a suffering one (Gen 4:10), and it ends when those cries have ceased (Rev 21:1-4) and the world is filled with the praise of God (Psalm 150 and Revelation 19). That movement, however, from plea to praise happens only because between those words to God things happen to transform the human situation or attitude and turn weeping to joy, tears to laughter.
(Patrick Miller, They Cried to the Lord, p. 55)
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