Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 13: How long?

How long?



How long will you forget me, O Lord; for ever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long shall I have anguish in my soul

and grief in my heart, day after da?

How long shall my enemy triumph over me?
Look upon me and answer me, O Lord my God;
lighten my eyes, lest I sleep in death;
Lest my enemy say, ‘I have prevailed against him,’
and my foes rejoice that I have fallen.
But I put my trust in your steadfast love;
my heart will rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, for he has dealt so bountifully with me.

‘How long?’ ask the journalist. ‘How long will we be shut down,’ they say. ‘How long will it take to bring this virus under control?’  Well it could be that this initial phase of the fight against this invisible virus will go on until September. Six months, said the deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries. ‘How long?’ is always a hard question to answer. For it stretches out into an unknown future. We don’t control the future. We barely control the present. And the past seems like a faraway land, a happy dream; a distant world of close relationships, and seats in cafes, and handshakes and conspiratorial conversations head to head, and streets crowded with home-coming football fans, and free movement, and pubs and cinemas and gyms and  and weddings and baptisms and even funerals – and worship and the Eucharist, that great place of communal remembering and refashioning for the faithful.

‘How long?’ asked the psalmist. This was the cry of someone with outstretched hands, who despairs and yet who hopes, who has experienced agony, but also ecstasy. This was the prayer of someone who is impatient for a change, a transformation, in their circumstances. Four times comes the questions ‘how long?’ This is a cry from the heart which seems to take the psalmist deeper into a pit of despondency in four stages. ‘You’ve forgotten me… You’ve hidden yourself from me… You have caused me pain deep and sorrow in my soul…  You have been deposed by my enemy.’

What is always refreshing about the prayers of the psalms is both their brutal honesty and their tenacious conviction that God has to hear and see and act. What, above all, stands out from this psalm is this theme of unswerving faith. Although the poet at prayer feels isolated, abandoned, forgotten and separated from God by the huge crisis in their life (are they seriously ill? are they dying?), yet still they complain to God rather than give up on God. There is a sense that the poet at prayer knows themselves very well. They have emotional intelligence.

They know they are shaken to the core. They know they need the reviving strength that can come only from God. They know everything seems bleak. Yet they also know (from previous experience? from reflection on past answers to desperation) that something can shift an inner disposition from despair to hope. And this transition from defeat to victory is accomplished not by self-reliance but through trust in God’s steadfast love. The future isn't closed down by the present, it is somehow opened up by the past.

The psalm begins with the question: ‘How long?’ It ends with the statement ‘How good.’ How good is this bountiful God that will make my heart sing again and my soul rejoice.

As we enter now into Passiontide, we begin to turn our face with Christ to follow his painful journey to the Cross.  He prayed for us and all the world, especially those who know pain and sorrow and defeat and despair. He continues to pray for us. And he hears our supplications.  For how long? For all time.

I end with the prayer written for this psalm in Common Worship: Daily Prayer, the liturgical resource for the Church of England at prayer each day.

Jesus, Christ, Son of God,

Who passed through the dark sleep of death,

Remember those who cry to you

In shame and silence and defeat

And raise them to your risen life,

For you are alive and reign for ever.

Amen.