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Laughingstock

           Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?

Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.

Away from me, all you who do evil, for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish; they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame. (Psalm 6)

 

I have to admit, as I read some of these psalms, I sometimes want to tell David, “Oh get over it” and “Enough with the melodrama.” I’ve little doubt that if I had been in his shoes, I would have been dead long before the psalms got written. I’m sure I would not have had the faith or courage to face the things he faced. But when someone is outside of the situation, it’s easy to dismiss it. To make matters worse, when one is in the situation, it’s next to impossible (at least for me) to resist the temptation to respond with melodrama.

Let me do something less well than I want, or even let me fail (which is not necessarily the same thing, though I often act as if they are) and I can and do wax as melodramatic, even if only to myself and to God. This is what is behind the prayer requests of “WDA” and the comments of “Whiiine.” I know I am a big baby, crying over tiny disappointments and petty problems. They’re nothing compared with David’s. His family discounted him, his father-in-law and son both tried to kill him. So did quite a few political rivals. At least one of his wives loathed him.

I must return to this, because we’re all guilty. The problems other people are facing may seem petty to us, because we’re not facing them. They may seem petty because they might be something that wouldn’t bother us, but something that would destroy us might be even more petty to them. It’s always dangerous to compare problems or discount struggles, even if they are our own. Dismissal is denial. It doesn’t solve anything.

The second issue we face is the same one mentioned yesterday. While David may go over the top in his lamentation, he is also faithful. He knows (based on his experience) that God will rescue him – not that it’s just possible that God could. He believes that God will act because of God’s unfailing love. If we were to tell someone today, “The Lord has heard my cry for mercy” or “The Lord accepts my prayer,” or “all my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish…” we would be laughingstocks, and we know it. I’m pretty sure David was laughed at for his trust in the Lord, too. That didn’t stop him, and neither should it stop us.

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