To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments; according to The Sheminith.[a] A Psalm of David.
Psalm 6 – ESV
O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.
Psalm 6 is the first of many Psalms that can be classified as “lament” Psalms. In other words it is a Psalm that expresses distress and disturbance to God – and, like many Psalms, David does not hold back in expressing himself to God. David begins assuming he is somehow under God’s anger, and he pleads for God to not rebuke him in anger. Instead he wants God to be gracious to him, because he is languishing – literally – because he is weak. He wants to be healed, because his very bones are troubled. His health is gone, and he is desperate for God to act. His soul is greatly troubled also – if bones represent his physical body, then his ‘soul’ is his whole life – mind and heart together. He is in a situation when everything seems to have gone wrong, and his cry is “But you – O Lord, how long?” In other words – God, how much longer are you going to let this horrible situation go on.
We don’t have to look far in this world, or in our lives to find times when we say this as individuals, or when the groups we are a part of will say this. At first glance it might sound somewhat rude to demand to know how much longer God will let something go on for – and often we avoid such words in our own prayers, and certainly in our songs. Yet this question is pervasive in the Psalms. The authors of the psalms are united in this cry to God – and lest we think this is just an OT thing, it is also the cry of the martyrs in Revelation as they wait for God to judge and put things to rights.
Far from being impertinent or rude this cry is one of faith. To cry out “How long?” demonstrates that we believe both that God is sovereign, and that he is good – that he is has the power to do something about our suffering, and that he wants to. Because we believe those things, we look around our world and we ask how such things can be, and how long they will go on for – and the Psalms give us full rights to express our confusion and anger and sorrow to God.
If we come to church on a Sunday morning fresh from news headlines of yet more killed in the Turkish earthquake, of a coming new Russian offensive in the Ukraine, and of whatever our own personal struggles are that morning and all we sing are songs of praise and joy then our churches are missing something vital. The Psalms can be categorised into different types of Psalm – praise, thanks, confession and lament – and the type with the highest number is lament. Why is that not so today when we look at out hymnbooks? Do we have nothing to lament? Or do we fear to face the reality of a broken world? Is our faith only for the happy times?
David here begs God to save him on the basis of his steadfast love – David knows his hope is in God’s character, as he pours out his heart to God. He is at risk of death, and as far as David knows, no-one praises God from the grave. He is worn out with weeping – his bed is soaked with his tears. David pours all of this out to God. The challenge for us is – do we? Am I willing to pray like this. Am I willing to admit this how I really feel? We do not need to worry that praying in such a way is somehow disrespectful to God, because God understands. God can take us saying this to him.
So maybe today we need to pour out our hearts in lament. It may be the news we hear on our TV screens. It maybe that we are desperately sad at the state of our national church. It maybe that we don’t know what else to do to move forward in whatever situation we find ourselves. This Psalm encourages us to come to our God and pout out our hearts to him.
And it maybe that as we do that we come to a fresh realisation of who God is for us in this moment – that is what seems to happen to David here – we don’t see why exactly his mood change, but it does – by the end of the Psalm he knows that God has heard, and that everything will be OK in the end.
As we read on in the Psalms there are Psalms where the move from lament to praise seems to have a logic, and at other times as here where the move comes suddenly, as if a fresh realisation has just come directly to David’s consciousness – and then there are other times where it doesn’t come at all. The Psalms are not neat and tidy – they are different, for different seasons of life, giving us words to pray in all sorts of situations.
The encouragement from Psalm 6 is to bring our tears and our pain, the chaos and confusion, and the fear and betrayal to him. To cry out to him. To tell him how life feels right now, and to see what he will do with that. And just maybe as we sit with God in the weeping we will know that he has heard our prayer, and that he will ultimately make all things right. So why not do just that right now?
Joshua's Tree Rooted 