For the leader. A psalm of David.
I
How long Lord? Will you utterly forget me?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I carry sorrow in my soul,
grief in my heart day after day?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
II
Look upon me, answer me, Lord, my God!
Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death,
Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed,”
lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.
III
But I trust in your mercy.
Grant my heart joy in your salvation,
I will sing to the Lord,
for he has dealt bountifully with me!
Psalms 13:1-6
How often do we feel like we are forgotten? It is easy to assume that God just isn’t paying attention to our trials. Today’s psalm expresses those desperate emotions very clearly. I would bet that we have all had moments in our lives when we felt that way. Maybe some of you are feeling that right now.
It certainly doesn’t help when someone says, “Oh don’t worry. This will pass.” It also doesn’t help when a well-meaning and faith-filled friend lectures about how God never abandons us. No matter how much we know about God’s love and devotion for us, it doesn’t negate the way we sometimes feel when the going gets rough.
Wouldn’t it be great to have such a strong faith that we would never feel like the psalmist in section I of this psalm? Of course, building a regular routine of prayer into our lives can get us closer to that ideal, but how can any of us truly overcome the possibility of such human emotions? After all, we are human.
So maybe today’s psalm is a model of what to do when those feeling start creeping into our lives. God really just wants us to talk to him, to share our thoughts and feelings, …all of them, good and bad. So the next time I feel like God has abandoned me, maybe I just need to tell him about it.
I find my prayer journal a great place to talk to God, and I highly recommend it to all of you, too. I think it’s okay if, now and then, my journal entries sound like Psalm 13. I can start out by lamenting my feeling of abandonment, then ask God to “look upon me, answer me …give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death.”
Hopefully, that process will lead me to “sing to the Lord, for he has dealt bountifully with me!”