The Psalms 13: How Long, O LORD

Sometimes blessings don’t always feel like blessings, do they? Sometimes the weight of it all can make us see our blessings as a curse. The trick is to not fall into that negativity. The trick is to allow yourself to see the blessing in it all, even when it can feel overwhelming.

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

Is anyone instantly transported to a different verse when you read, “How long O LORD?”
“How long, O Lord, holy and true until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Rev 6:10)
Should we see a correlation here? Is the similarity more than just coincidental? I know that there are other places in the Bible that the same thing is said. Is it possible that when we read this we’re supposed to remember the ones that have happened before? If we pay attention to the context in this verse it certainly echoes the same sentiment found in the verse in Revelation. In Revelation it’s the souls who have been slaughtered because of their testimony in the Word of the Lord. I don’t have an answer for this, but it’s certainly something that I’m intrigued by and have been giving a decent amount of study over the past year, or so. Just what do the souls beneath the altar have to do with spilt blood and altars? There’s something there.

2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Again with the “how long…”. David’s exasperation is palpable. There’s something important to point out here: while David is “a man after God’s own heart”, he is overcome with emotion about God forgetting about him. We know that God hasn’t forgotten him as that’s not an attribute of God, but David is still calling God out for it. While we should always seek to walk in the footsteps mapped out by God, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much should we fall into a zealous temper tantrum. The key is to move on after and learn from it. Don’t just accept it as a part of life, learn from it.

3 Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,

We should remember that David is potentially writing this as he’s running for his life, probably from Saul. He’s in a situation where if he stops to lay his head down to rest, that could be the moment that Saul catches up to him and David really does sleep the sleep of death. Very few of us have actually been in a situation like this, but I think that most of us can relate to lesser version where we feel that if we don’t keep moving then we’ll be overwhelmed by all of the responsibilities we have.

How do we best deal with this? Is it to keep running? Maybe sometimes… Very often we’re guilted into feeling like we’re not “giving it all to God” (and maybe this is actually the case some of the time) but we see here that David was following God’s calling for his life and yet he still had to keep moving if he wanted to stay alive. In this instance (like many of the instances in our own lives) God’s blessing was only provided because David did keep moving. It was all part of the plan. The hard part is being able to discern God’s voice while we’re keeping moving. David was apparently able to do this, and maybe this is one of the reasons why we hear him called, “a man after God’s own heart.”

4 lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him," lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

So the thing about this verse is that it has an underlying sentiment that is buried under the actual statement. If the enemy in question here is actually King Saul, then what he would actually be saying would be, “I have prevailed over God,” since it was God who had said that David would be King.

5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

Just a quick reminder here that the name “Jesus” comes from the Hebrew word “Yeshua”, which has a meaning of Yahweh’s Salvation. So, hidden in this verse (and don’t worry, I’m not saying that this was the sole intent of the verse) is the statement that he will rejoice in Jesus.

6 I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Psa 13:1-6 ESV)

Look at this statement right here. We’ve just chronicled how David is running for his life, and here he says that the LORD has dealt bountifully with him. Let’s go back to what I said after verse 3. When we have to just keep moving because we’re overwhelmed because of all of the responsibilities that we have, how often do we look at all of our responsibilities and thank God for all that He has given us? This is easy to overlook. It’s so easy to turn our bounty into our headache, but when we have responsibility it’s because we’ve been found worthy of being trusted with it. Are there times that we wish we weren’t given some of these things? Sure, but don’t let yourself get caught up in that. Remind yourself that you are a child of the King and that your King thinks so much of you that He knows that you can handle it.

This may be “easier said than done” right now, but if we keep acknowledging it then we’ll eventually be able to see life through those God-colored lenses!

Have a great day, and Shalom!

This first appeared on my personal blog at the following address:
http://thepoiema.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-psalms-13-how-long-o-lord.html