March 12, 2021
Psalm 6
To the tune of “All Praise to Thee, My God, This Night” L.M. Sing it at seedbed.com/soundtrack
1 O Lord, in anger don’t rebuke,
In wrath, don’t chide or turn from me.
2 Have mercy, Lord, for I am faint,
My very bones in agony.
3 Come heal me, Lord, my anguished soul
cries out, “How long, O Lord, how long?”
4 Deliver me, and save me, Lord—
Your steadfast love remains my song.
5 No one can praise You from the grave,
Nor mention You when they are dead.
6 I groan all day, all night I weep;
My tears now drench and flood my bed.
7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow and
they fail because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, you evil ones!
The Lord has heard my cries and woes.
9 The Lord in mercy heard my cry;
Receives my prayer before His face.
10 My enemies will be dismayed,
And turn back, shamed and in disgrace.
CONSIDER THIS
Here the psalmist teaches us a song of deliverance. Notice how the singer holds together two divergent realities throughout the song. While struggle and agony will not release the singer, the singer will not let go of the love of God. Were we to map the genome of the Psalms, one of the primary strands of DNA would be this inseparable, discordant bond between the deep inner pain of a thousand circumstances of people, and the deeper, softer, yet stronger melody of the Deliverer. See it at work in this verse:
Come heal me, Lord, my anguished soul
cries out, “How long, O Lord, how long?”
Deliver me, and save me, Lord—
Your steadfast love remains my song.
Though I can’t prove it, my strong hunch is that Jesus sang through the 150 Psalms throughout his forty days in the wilderness. He sang them throughout his life, right up to Song 22 from the cross. These songs simultaneously acclimate us to the realities of being human and the reality of the love of God. And the truth? I can’t know one without the other.
The songs and stories of every age aspire to transport us to some illusory place of pain-free life where we write our own prescriptions and where we call the shots and control the outcomes. (And isn’t that what the tempter was up to both in Eden and with Jesus in the wilderness and later at Gethsemane?) This is the battle. Over and over and over, the psalmist takes us straight to the front lines. It’s a hard fight, but it’s the good fight, and it’s the way of Jesus. And because he won, we will win.
If I’m honest, I don’t really want to go there. Something about that grande, five-pump, no-water chai latte with a shot of espresso can keep reality at bay for a little while. The insatiable strategy of small indulgences works like that.
Ask Yourself. Share with Another.
On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest, how much do you turn to the practice of small indulgences (emotional eating and drinking) to get through the rough spots in life?
For the Awakening,
J.D. Walt
Sower-in-Chief
seedbed.com