How Long, O Lord? (Psalm 13)

Today’s post is from A Meditative Journey Through the Psalms by Timothy and Julie Tennent. Most recently, he served as the president of Asbury Theological Seminary among other posts he holds across the global church. She is a gifted musician and was one of the driving forces that helped bring to fruition the Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. We will share some of their writing on the Psalms on Sundays.

This is the only psalm in the Bible that begins with a series of five questions. All five questions reveal the inner anguish of the psalmist in the face of the silence of God. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” (vv. 1–2). Allow these questions to resonate deep within you. The Psalms do not shy away from asking God questions. The “how long” psalms are found throughout the Psalter (6:3; 13:1–2; 35:17; 74:10; 80:4; 89:46; 90:13; 94:3; 119:84), carving out at the heart of biblical revelation the necessary theological space for lament and anguished questions before God.

Sometimes we, like David, find ourselves living in the agony of the silence of God. We come before God and all we seem to have are unan-swered questions. It is important that we, as the church, acknowledge the reality and depth of such experiences. Indeed, one of the chief ways that the psalms serve as a means of grace to us is by giving voice to the full range of what we experience in relationship with God. Sometimes our prayers are not answered in ways that we understand or can see. Some of our prayers go unanswered for many agonizing years as we learn to lean into God and journey through a kind of habitat of waiting.

The important lesson from Psalm 13 is to never forget in your times of darkness what God has revealed in the times of light. The psalmist, even in the depth of God’s silence, puts his trust in God’s “unfailing love” (v. 5). In the midst of unanswered questions, the psalmist declares, “my heart rejoices in your salvation” (v. 5). He even chooses to “sing to the Lord” because he remembers God’s past faithfulness: “he has been good to me” (v. 6). His circumstances have not changed. His inner emotional state may still be in turmoil. His prayers may yet remain unanswered. Yet, he remembers and he trusts, and that in itself begins to transform us and reorient us.

We also recognize that this psalm could only anticipate what we now know in full: namely, that Christ himself has entered into this liminal space between the silence of God and the full joy of divine resolution. Indeed, this psalm points us to the agony of Christ himself in the garden of Gethsemane, who had to trust God’s faithfulness, even in the midst of God’s silence. In the agony of the garden, it was difficult for Jesus Christ to capture a sense of the glory that would unfold in a few short days in the wake of the empty tomb and his glorious resurrection.

Christians must cultivate holy memories of God’s work in history and in our lives, which alone can sustain us in the times of despair and darkness. Christ’s obedience to go to the cross was made possible through just such holy memories. Likewise, God will also bring us from the question marks of life to the great exclamation marks of his sure action.

For the Awakening,
Timothy and Julie Tennent

THE HYMN

Sing Psalm 13 with the Seedbed Psalter today. I suggest the tune “Arise/Restoration” (“Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy”). You can hear the tune played online by Julie Tennent here. If you listen to the podcast audio version, I will sing the psalm in this same tune. For your convenience, the words from the Psalter are printed below. 

1   How long, Lord, will You forget me?
How long will You hide Your face?
2   How long, Lord, will this depression
grip my soul in its embrace?
How long will this dreadful sorrow
pierce my heart all night and day?
How long will my soul’s attacker
be exalted o’er my way?

3   Look on me, Lord, come and answer,
Light my eyes lest death approach;
4   Lest my enemy claim vict’ry
and my foes gloat in reproach.
5   But I trust Your lovingkindness,
in salvation I’ll rejoice;
6   For the Lord has been good to me,
I will sing with heart and voice.

P.S. Get the Resources

If you would like to have the meditations and the metrical psalter in a beautiful two-volume set—which I highly recommend— you can order those through the Seedbed store.