For the leader. A maskil of the Korahites.
I
O God, we have heard with our own ears;
our ancestors have told us
The deeds you did in their days,
with your own hand in days of old;
You rooted out nations to plant them,
crushed peoples and expelled them.
Not with their own swords did they conquer the land,
nor did their own arms bring victory;
It was your right hand, your own arm,
the light of your face for you favored them.
You are my king and my God,
who bestows victories on Jacob.
Through you we batter our foes;
through your name we trample our adversaries.
Not in my bow do I trust,
nor does my sword bring me victory.
You have brought us victory over our enemies,
shamed those who hate us.
In God we have boasted all the day long;
your name we will praise forever.
II
But now you have rejected and disgraced us;
you do not march out with our armies.
You make us retreat before the foe;
those who hate us plunder us at will.
You hand us over like sheep to be slaughtered,
scatter us among the nations.
You sell your people for nothing;
you make no profit from their sale.
You make us the reproach of our neighbors,
the mockery and scorn of those around us.
You make us a byword among the nations;
the peoples shake their heads at us.
All day long my disgrace is before me;
shame has covered my face
At the sound of those who taunt and revile,
at the sight of the enemy and avenger.
III
All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
nor been disloyal to your covenant.
Our hearts have not turned back,
nor have our steps strayed from your path.
Yet you have left us crushed,
desolate in a place of jackals;
you have covered us with a shadow of death.
If we had forgotten the name of our God,
stretched out our hands to another god,
Would not God have discovered this,
God who knows the secrets of the heart?
For you we are slain all the day long,
considered only as sheep to be slaughtered.
IV
Awake! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
Rise up! Do not reject us forever!
Why do you hide your face;
why forget our pain and misery?
For our soul has been humiliated in the dust;
our belly is pressed to the earth.
Rise up, help us!
Redeem us in your mercy.
Psalms 44:1-27
This psalm definitely represents someone who is lamenting tough times. It is sometimes strange to read these psalms that seem to attack God and complain quite a lot. But then again, haven’t we all had moments of doubt in times of trouble?
At some of my lowest times in life, I imagine that if I had put pen to paper, it would have sounded a little like this psalm. Thankfully, that was not my reaction …or maybe it would have been better if I did have a prayer journal in those times. Certainly, there is something therapeutic about getting these feelings off your chest.
In fact, my impression from our journey through the Psalms so far, is that the psalmist usually comes around by the end and turns back to praise. You can almost feel that process of healing in the words of the psalm. This time, however, it is not quite as dramatic a turn by the end. That short final section, section IV, still asks God, “Why do you hide your face?” He still laments that “our soul has been humiliated in the dust.”
But at least he is still acknowledging his faith that God will someday save him from his troubles. He still prays to God for relief. “Rise up, help us! Redeem us in your mercy.” Honestly, when someone is really hurting, it is a blessing to be able to maintain the faith. Maybe that is the message today.
It is okay to have human emotions and human reactions to hardship. And as we’ve said before, God wants us to come to him with everything, even our troubles …maybe especially our troubles. It would be nice if we remembered that God does not “cover… us with a shadow of death.” He does not “reject us forever.”
Everything happens in its appropriate time. But wouldn’t it be nice if that time was always what we wanted it to be? Then again, God knows better than we do what is best for us. So I guess we’re back to that trust issue again. It’s so hard to trust God to deliver us to the places we need to be. Let’s pray that we find the courage to surrender to God’s will, even when we don’t understand it.