When I was a kid, I was both fascinated and intimidated by the giant steel arch-shaped swings that every amusement park seemed to have in the 1990’s. Part of that fascination had to do with how fun and how scary the ride looked. But part of it had to do with the whiplash effect it would have on the riders. Two or three people would be strapped into an oversized harness and then pulled like a slingshot as far back as physics (or perhaps the park’s liability lawyers) would allow. Then, they would be launched at high speeds, only to snap back and forth like a rubber band. Exciting stuff for sure.
Watching someone ride those swings is kind of like reading Psalm 13.
King David’s handiwork here is both short and explosive, and most interestingly, jarring. The psalm’s first four verses find themselves rolling around in the muck of sadness, abandonment, and isolation, only to snap into high praise to God in the last two verses.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
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?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Ps. 13, ESV)
Charles Spurgeon nicknamed this the “howling” psalm, because if you repeat the multiple “how longs” quickly enough, it begins to sound like you are “howling.” And that’s what David is really doing here—crying out in pain to the Lord as he feels his sense of isolation and senses the lack of God’s presence.
Some of us might take pause at the extremity of David’s language.
Who is he, after all, to question the God of the universe’s actions? If you really think about it, isn’t David coming very close to accusing God of abandoning him (contrary to God’s promises in 2 Sam. 7)? And wouldn’t that be insinuating that God isn’t good or loving or reliable?
I think there’s at least two things to be said to this. The first is the question of “how long O Lord?” isn’t unique to David. In fact, we see it asked of God (and answered by Him!) in Habakkuk 1, and then asked again by the saints in Revelation 6. Given that great cloud of witnesses, I think it might validate the children of God asking their Heavenly Father such questions.
The second thing, and I suspect the key to unlocking the psalm’s relevance today, is to agree with Sinclair Ferguson that it is a variation on the Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6. You may remember that this was the language God gave to Moses and Aaron to use to communicate the blessing of His presence and provision to them. It is often used in benedictions in our church services:
The Lord bless you and keep you
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace
The similarities are uncanny.
David’s feeling of alleged abandonment contrasts with the promise of God’s blessings. His inability to see God’s face directly contrasts with the promise of God’s shining face rising on his people, and the fear of David’s enemies winning clashes with God’s promise of protection and peace. We should not miss the significance of this. David is taking God’s promises and praying them back to Him. More than that, he is merging his deepest fears, anxieties, and sadness with God’s Fatherly promise of care.
Well what might this mean for us? As a counselor, I find myself dealing very often with the difference between content and process in a counseling session. Content is what is said or directly communicated by a client. Process is how it is communicated or how somebody landed on a conclusion. This often includes nonverbal communication, as well as any kind of embodied actions or rituals that got them there. A good example might be the husband who looks at his wife and says “I love you” with a frown on his face and his arms crossed. The content communicated is love, but the process communicates frustration and distance.
I suspect part of how David gets from “how long O Lord” to “my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” is because he takes this content of the Aaronic blessing and engages in a process of both howling out in pain to God while fixing his gaze on God’s steadfast love; past, present, and future. At first, David is beset by his ailments, depression, and isolation. All he can do is feel this and then express it. But then he takes the Word of God for what it’s worth, and meditates on God’s goodness as well as His mighty works in David’s life. And he goes back and forth and back and forth (if you need another example, take a look at Psalm 22, also a Davidic psalm with a surprising ending!).
In counseling, we call this a “dialectic,” and it often is a long process of back and forth that usually ends in resolution.
And to be fair, we don’t know how long it took David to write Psalm 13. Perhaps he wrote it in a few minutes; perhaps it took him 30 years. And that’s the point—in order to deal with our pain, we have to face the reality of it and express it over time. But if we want to find true hope in it, we also have to look at the One who loves us with an unbreakable steadfast love. We might well amend Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s old maxim thusly: “for every look we take at our pain, we should take ten looks at Christ.” It is in this back and forth that we find the hope of peace and meet the gaze of the Savior, in whose “presence there is fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16.11).
So if you feel the lack of God’s gracious presence in your life today, remember the arch swing in the theme park.
Be reminded that it is a normal part of the Christian life to have these sorts of feelings, and it is a good thing to “howl” to God in your pain while fixing your gaze on the One who loves you most deeply. And of course, sometimes this process is best done in the presence of a faithful Christian counselor who has experiencing guiding many through these times of deep distress. If you are in need of such help, we at the Christian Counseling Center stand ready to comfort you with the same comfort that God has given us (2 Cor. 1.4).
Post written by Dr. Brian Mesimer