This is a short psalm of only six verses. But in those few lines we get a good idea of how this psalmist relates to God. He is an anxious fellow, a hand-wringer. He even has some real issues with God. I find psalmists to be whiney much of the time. This fellow is no exception. Maybe if we're really honest we might see something of ourselves in his complaint.
1 How long, O Lord, will you forget me?
How long will you hide your face?
2 How long must I bear grief in my soul,
this sorrow in my heart day and night?
How long shall my enemy prevail?
3 Look at me, answer me, Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes lest I fall asleep in death,
4 lest my enemy say: 'I have overcome him';
lest my foes rejoice to see my fall.
5 As for me, I trust in your merciful love.
Let my heart rejoice in your saving help:
6 Let me sing to the Lord for his goodness to me,
singing psalms to the name of the Lord, the Most High.
Verses 1-3: A psalmist thinks of himself as a friend of God. Here he seems to think that gives him permission to be even rude. What presumption to think God is hiding God's face. He's exasperated and annoyed with God. If there's anything we can say about the God of the ancient Hebrews is that this God fights for them. But this psalmist has either forgotten that or is angry he's not feeling God's salvation more personally and on time! "How long....how long?" He's made God as small as his own little world.
Verse 4: I get the feeling that the psalmist is trying to blackmail God. It's as if he's saying, "You know, if I fall to my enemies, they will think that YOU are weak and can't be relied upon for help." I don't think God is bothered by this tricky thinking.
Verses 5,6: Then, as is usually the case with a whiney psalmist, he comes around in the end and gives God the thanks that is God's due. We hope he means it.
But you know what, and this really matters, maybe we do have real enemies, those who might even have wished us harm or who have been trouble makers in our lives over the years. But Jesus makes it clear what we're supposed to do with them: We are to pray for them. Wish them well. Wish them what they need for salvation.
But the other and more serious enemies we have are within us. "You're your own worst enemy" we say, or has been said to us. We burden ourselves with our wrong-headed thinking, by the foolishness we listen to and make our own, the little (or not so little) Christ-displacing cults we follow, the stupidity we defend. Another Lent begins. Another Lent to kind of get it right. But I'm getting older; I don't have forever. I will approach this Lent as if it is my last.
