How Long?

Scripture

Psalm 13

¹ How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
² How long must I bear pain in my soul,
    and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

³ Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
    my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

⁵ But I trusted in your steadfast love;
    my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
⁶ I will sing to the Lord,
    because he has dealt bountifully with me.   (NRSV)

Devotion

I can't even begin to count the times I've said or heard the words "How long will..." in recent months.  Back when our church first decided to suspend physical worship in March, we expected that it would just be for a couple weeks.  Maybe we would even be back by Easter!  Now those expectations seem hopelessly naive.

The longer our doors remain closed and the more Zoom meetings I sit in on, the wearier we all seem to become.  We wonder how much longer we will be expected to do this.  How much longer can we even stand so much pain, isolation, and sorrow?  And there are days when I am just so tired...

We are not the first people to deal with such sorrow.  Those who have prayed Psalm 13 throughout the ages have had their own grief to bear.  Like us, they they seek a God whose face seems to be hidden from them and ask how long their suffering must continue.  Like us, they worry that the Lord may have forgotten them.

Things change, though, when the final two verses shift from laments and calls for help to an attitude of praise.  The psalmist may be weary and discouraged, but they trust that God is still good.  That trust, which is based on all the ways that God has been good to them in the past, assures them that God will save them from their current plight.  Therefore, they remind their hearts to keep rejoicing in God's salvation, even as they wearily press on through their time of sorrow.

In his book The Soul in Paraphrase: Prayer and the Religious Affections, Don Saliers explains that the prayers we recite teach us a lot about who God is and what our relationship with the Almighty is.  For instance, a prayer asking for help reminds us that God is a powerful savior who answers our cries of despair.  Psalm 13 adds in another layer by teaching us an important lesson about who we are.  As  James L. Mays writes, "Agony and adoration hung together by a cry for life--that is the truth about us as people of faith...we are simultaneously the anxious, fearful, dying historical person who cannot find God where we want God to be, and the elect with a second history, a salvation history, a life hid with Christ in God" (80). 

Friends, we may feel forgotten and weary unto death.  We may have trouble seeing God's face in all this sorrow.  But that doesn't mean that we have been forsaken.  God is still here, and he is listening to our cries.  When we offer up prayers of sorrow mixed with praise, we remind ourselves that though we may be, anxious, fearful, and weary, we are still children of the Living God.  The shall be a day when our weeping shall turn to joy, and we shall sing of God's goodness once again.

Don't give up you who are weary.  We may have to bear this pain in our soul a while longer, but help is coming.  So come, let us offer up our prayers of lament and praise to God, who is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. The Holy One is here to respond to our every need.  And we can be sure that our salvation is coming.

Prayer

God, we are weary.  Save us, we pray.  Turn our sorrow into joy and our weeping into laughter.  We praise you for all the blessings you have already a bestowed upon us and for the ones that we know are to come.  Amen.

Bibliography

Mays, James Luther. Psalms. Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994.

Saliers, Don E. The Soul in Paraphrase : Prayer and the Religious Affections. New York: Seabury Press, 1980.