I am falling in love with the psalms. I even have been trying to preach about them (or with them) through Advent this year. Why? They can be so fascinatingly and provocatively honest! Unfortunately, sometimes when we pray we think we have to be polite to God. Perhaps we have been sucked into the idea that it helps to get your point across if you sugar-coat it a bit? Maybe we are afraid to tell God what we really think! (As if God doesn’t already know.) Not so for the psalmists.
Take Psalm 85, for example, starting with verses 1-3 here. Basically what the psalmist is saying is: God, you blessed your land once, remember? God, you forgave your people when they wandered, remember? God, you stopped being angry with them, remember? The Psalmist is remembering what God has done in the past and longs for God to restore things the same way.
We do the same thing. God, I remember when there were 100 children in Sunday School. God, I remember when my husband was alive and we shared evenings together. God, I remember when I could walk without pain. God, I remember when life was so simple and now it’s complicated and I don’t know what to do. God, I remember when the family wasn’t always fighting. We start by telling God the way things use to be.
This psalm has been polite so far. But suddenly the psalmist goes ballistic. The psalm gets loud (in my head). There’s shouting (I imagine)!
So why are you still angry at us, God? Is this going to last forever? Is your displeasure going to keep on to our children and our grandchildren? God, if you would just love us too! (And here comes a little bargaining with God.) You know, God, if you could just give us life again, maybe we would have a chance to rejoice in you a little. Restore us, O God, like you’ve done in the past.
That’s my paraphrase. In my opinion, the psalmist lets God have it. Here’s the official version so you can judge for yourselves here.
A few weeks ago a Grammom was babysitting two grandchildren while the parents went out for dinner. At that point in her life, Granddaughter’s two and a half year old self was having a hard time adjusting to sharing parents’ attention with her new little brother, let alone sharing her grandparents’ attention too. We were all on the couch when the new baby started fussing and needed to be held. Immediately Granddaughter was off the couch calling for Grammom to come play with her in the other room. But Grammom was holding the baby. Grammom called Granddaughter to bring her toys into the den, but she stood separately and defiantly in the other room, “Come play with me.” In spite of Grammom’s invitation to come sit with her on the couch, Granddaughter wouldn’t or couldn’t listen. The calls became wails and shouted demands.
The baby had changed everything. Granddaughter wanted things restored to exactly the way they use to be when Grammom could come smiling at a moment’s notice. Her yelling and crying were a not bad thing…not at all. In fact, her anger let her Grammom know exactly how the child was feeling abandoned and insecure with the transitions going on around her. But no amount of yelling and crying could restore things for her to the way they use to be.
Have you ever had someone ream you out, blast you for something he or she perceived you did, and then after letting off steam, turn their back and leave—refusing to dialogue? No chance to clear up misunderstanding? No chance to talk, to explain or even to comfort? After laying out before God what he or she wanted restored, after pointedly saying what God was or wasn’t doing, the psalmist could have turned his or her back and walked out of the room on God. But the psalmist did something else: “Okay, I will listen to what the Lord God is saying,” he or she said.
It took maybe ten minutes for the baby to fall asleep. Grammom laid the baby down and went into the kitchen, picked up an angry, frustrated, crying little girl, and began to sing softly in her ear their special lullaby song, a song that sings to her her own name, a song that her Grammom only sings to her. Granddaughter patted her Grammom on the back as if to say, “Well, Grammom, you finally got the point and came to me.” Grammom, on the other hand, knew that Granddaughter was now listening in a new way to their special song about how much she was loved by her grandparents. The song about their love could not take Granddaughter back to being the only grandchild, but it could help her navigate the present.
We can’t see God’s nearness when we are comparing our current situation to the good days of the past. We can’t notice God’s restoring work in the middle of crying our demands about what we want God to do in our version of a good future. After the psalmist (or we ourselves) cry out for God to restore us—yes, even yell for God to do something—we have a precious chance to pause and listen. “I will listen,” says the psalmist, “to what the Lord God is saying.”
And what does the psalmist in this case hear God saying? You can read it about it here. This is some of the most beautiful poetry in the psalms. God’s steadfast love and God’s faithfulness have come from the far corners and met where we are now. God’s justice and God’s peace have come from the left and right and meet to kiss each other right where we are standing. God’s faithfulness has spring up from the ground under our feet and God’s righteousness is raining down on us from the sky. And here we are standing in the present place—not in the past, not in the future—but standing here, now, where the fullness of God is converging. Listen to what the Lord God is saying!
Jesus Christ, the one foretold by the prophets, is God converging into our present. In Christ heaven met earth; in Christ God entered human dust. In Christ’s body on the cross, hands reached out and righteousness and peace met. In his body hung between ground and sky, God’s love and faithfulness came together and embraced all of us.
Here is the good news: we can’t get back our pasts, nor can we rewrite them. We have little control over our futures, but in the desert places of our lives, God meets and restores us in the present now. “In Christ we live and move and have our being.” It’s not too much of a stretch to say that God picks us up, holds us, and sings us our name. We are invited to listen.
Chuck Miller says
The picture of the lullaby reminds me of my life verse, which I see as God’s lullaby to us. “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine.” (Is 43:1)
Beth Mark says
Thank you, Elaine. I found this to be very meaningful. B