How Long, O Lord?
Amid heightened fears in the public consciousness and calls for social distance, I encourage you to use these short meditations and prayer points as a resource to deepen our faith in this trying time and to unify us in prayer for our community, nation and world.
I am ready to be done now. Does anyone else feel like this? How long have we been socially isolating, how long have I been helping my kids with online learning? It has not been long, but it feels long and seems like there is a substantial road still ahead.
This was a feeling that was certainly not foreign to the Psalmist. The conditions were different, but we hear the Psalmist cry out to God in Psalm 13:
1 "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
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?"
Just like I reminded us last week when I talked about feeling anxiety and fear, here too; it is not wrong or sinful to feel the weight and disequilibrium of adversity. To want to be done, especially in the midst of struggle and suffering is okay. But when we feel these longings for resolution and even redemption, here too we are faced with a choice.
Because there is whiny waiting - taking that sense of "How long O Lord" and making yourself (and generally all those around you) miserable with it. Or, there is the response that the Psalmist models by the end of his lament:
5 "But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Don't take that as some sort of call to go about in a Pollyanna denial of the reality of the disequilibrium. After all, verse 6 comes after verse 1. The Psalmist affirms both. But what makes the difference is that the adversity is couched in an attitude of faith. Even the lament, the crying out, is focused and directed toward God. Therefore, the response can be informed, shaped, and redeemed by God to bring us from verse 1 to verse 6.
I feel very keenly this year what I say almost every Lent. We start out with our own plans about what we will forego and fast from and take on as discipline etc...and then, the Lord shows up and generally shows us His plan for what He wants us to learn and take on or deny. I hadn't planned on fasting from getting coffee with friends or gathering for worship. But also, like every year, the ways the Lord leads and directs bring us more deeply in touch with the spirit of Lent than any regimen we could come up with.
Feeling the length and lack of this strange, unprecedented season in our lives may well bring us to that place of longing and lament. Lent teaches us to take that longing and focus it, direct it upward. To recognize that when I feel the overwhelming desire to be done with this trial, what I am really longing for is the perfection of Christ's Kingdom. When I feel frustrated, what I am ultimately frustrated with is a world that is broken and in need of Resurrection.
Lent also teaches us to look for ways to engage with our world. Traditionally this is expressed through charity. But as I have read over the news feed from New York and other epicenters of this virus, I am struck by how lament is something that I can engage in on behalf of others. When I begin to feel the pinch of inconvenience this pandemic has brought to my experience, I can pause and focus that outward and ultimately upward in lament and prayer for those who are experiencing true anguish, not mere inconvenience.
So, as we feel the length, the lack and the inconvenience of this season, I invite you to join me in turning those feelings outward and upward to the God who still looks upon us and all who are suffering today with steadfast love and the offer of salvation.
Grace and Peace,
Steve+