1 I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths
and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
2 Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.
3 You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;
you spared me from going down to the pit.
4 Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;
praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
6 When I felt secure, I said, “I will never be shaken.”
7 Lord, when you favoured me, you made my royal mountain stand firm;
but when you hid your face, I was dismayed.
8 To you, Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy:
9 “What is gained if I am silenced, if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
10 Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me; Lord, be my help.”
11 You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
Lord my God, I will praise you forever.
When 106-year-old Connie Titchen was discharged from Birmingham’s City Hospital on April 13th, she was given a guard of honour of staff clapping her off the ward. For Connie, a great-grandmother born in 1913, was the oldest known person in the country to have pulled through from the perils of Covid-19. She gave everyone’s spirits a lift. Everyone who had supported her to recovery – from cleaner to consultant – was exultant. Many prayers answered, much thanks given, joy expressed and shared.
Psalm 30 is a prayer of thanksgiving for someone who has recovered from a serious illness. Praise is its heart. And it promotes a life of praise, whatever the circumstances. The final verse establishes the purpose of the plaintiff’s re-oriented life: ‘that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.’
The psalmist begins with an attitude of praise which is both full of rejoicing and defiance. In verse 2 the direction of praise is set by the experience of crying out for help for God and being healed of some illness or disease. The lived-in experience of being separated or cut-off (in a grave, as good as dead) and then being lifted up.
One of the dangerous simplicities of faith, which we can all buy in to if we are not careful, is a belief that the ‘more we pray, the longer we pray, the more fervent we pray’ God will hear us and make all things right. This might be one reading of this psalm, if we are not careful. What the psalm invites us to do is go deeper and understand praise. Praise is not a weapon of prayer designed to twist God’s arm and act on our account. Praise is a defiant way of life that does not give up and will not allow the person to be silenced by their circumstances. An outlook that praises God no matter what is something contagious and life-giving when it has integrity and truth. For praise animates the soul that will not be silenced (ie the soul confined to a self-inflicted or outwardly imposed restriction).
In this psalm, the sufferer, who has wept through the night and found joy in the morning (vs5), re-evaluates the path of suffering honestly. This re-evaluation includes remembering an experience of being far from God (‘when you hid your face, I was dismayed’ – vs7); and also remembering crying out for mercy and their argument that if they were to die they could no longer praise (‘will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?’ – vs 9).
In classic hyperbolic comparison, the psalmist then sets up a set of powerful alternating pictures in vs11: ‘You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.’ What a wonderfully vivid description of how praise changes a person. A dance will always invite others in. A new wardrobe will always get noticed (some of these TV makeover shows like Ten Years Younger provide that big reveal moment where family or friends are utterly stunned by the transformation of their loved one). And someone humming a tune of happiness will not be silenced.
The psalms do not simplify faith. They amplify it. They are not prescriptive, but they are descriptive. They don’t dumb down suffering and sweep it under the carpet, instead they show what happens when a person of faith does suffer. The choice is silence or praise – praise not in order to twist God’s arm but to describe the way God lifts us up even at death. In this resurrection season, we remember that suffering and death do not have the last world. ‘Nothing in all creation… can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8.38-9); and the one with the heart of praise lives this truth by refusing to be silenced.
[1] New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
For me this psalm is full of ups and downs - being lifted up and down in the pit. But there’s also the bit in between. In v.6 we hear the voice of complacency: “In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved”. Complacency can stifle the voice of praise or as A.W.Tozer said “Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth”. When we are complacent we forget we rely on God and depend on ourselves. We lose sight of the holiness of God and our fundamental call to worship. The psalmist experiences the glory of God when lifted up, the strength and help of God in the pit, but in his complacency he experienced God hiding his face from him (v7). Praise is as you say “a defiant way of life” not to be silenced. It is not the voice from a comfortable, complacent position.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter was on her daily walk and at the gate to the Woods she stood back at a safe distance and waited for a couple to pass. Her action was not met with thanks but rather “We don’t bite!”. We cannot afford to be complacent when so many lives are at risk, and when so many NHS staff and care workers are selflessly putting their own lives at risk working sometimes without the essential PPE. The virus will flourish within a complacent atmosphere. We must continue to keep our social distance and abide by the lockdown rules until the time is right to begin to loosen them, however much we are inconvenienced by them.