How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
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?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Psalm 13:1-3a
Sometimes, when I need words to put to feelings, I go to the book of Psalms. It can paint for me the highest pictures of joy and praise, but can also depict the depths of depression. The writers of the Psalms knew how to get in touch with the rawness of human emotion, and knew that God was there in the midst of it all.
The past week has been hard. That feels like an understatement. I've been sick, I've had a relationship be severed, and a lot of what I dreamed for and prayed for fell apart. I've been working night shift and so my sleep schedule is all over the place, which as we all know isn't great for your mental health. So it's not been the best of times. I couldn't pray for a while except to cry and ask why. But when I was ready, I found some more words in Psalm 13.
Patience has never been my strong suit. I'm not very good at waiting and just being. I've realized over the past few years that I'm a bit more of a mover and shaker. I like to take action to make my hopes and dreams come true. To give up control and just wait? Awful.
That's where the psalmist seems to be too. Waiting, and hating it. Waiting can often feel like we are languishing away. It rarely feels productive, and our society is oh so preoccupied with productivity. If you're like me, patience often doesn't feel like the virtue the old adage tells us about. Rather it seems like a twiddling of thumbs and pacing back and forth - a pointless usage of energy.
"How long?" You can almost hear the anguish. And I feel it in my bones today. How long until I find a life partner? How long until someone puts in the kind of love and effort I put into a relationship? How long until someone decides I am worth staying for? How long, O Lord?
In reading and reflecting on this passage, however, I have discovered something about the psalmist's waiting and crying out. When it is asked of God, "How long?" there is an assumption still of God's goodness. The psalmist asks "How long?" - as if saying "God, I know you are still good. I know you haven't abandoned me. I just want to know how long I have to wait."
Asking God "How long?" implies that there is trust. Trust that there will be an end to the anguish. Trust that God is still active and, perhaps, trust that God is being productive on our behalf while we sit in the stillness of patience. "How long?" doesn't mean that there is no faith. In fact it takes great amounts of faith to ask the tough questions of God, to bring the rawness of emotion before the Maker of the Universe, and to still sit in the hollow quietness of waiting.
So today, perhaps you too are feeling like you are languishing in a waiting period. Perhaps you too are desiring to see the end of your wait and to see the fruits of your patience. I hope you take heart, as I am doing, in knowing that God's mercy and goodness doesn't exclude the waiting periods. You and I can cry out alongside the psalmist "How long?" and know that this is not a cry from a lack of faith, but an abundance of it.
Comments