Tag Archives: prayer for help

Psalm 102 The Song of One Suffering in Solitude

Psalm 102

A prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the LORD.
¹Hear my prayer, O LORD; let my cry come to you.
²Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call.
³For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace.
⁴My heart is stricken and withered like grass; I am too wasted to eat my bread.
⁵Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my skin.
⁶I am like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places.
⁷I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.
⁸All day long my enemies taunt me; those who deride me use my name for a curse.
⁹For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink,
¹⁰because of your indignation and anger; for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.
¹¹My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.
¹²But you, O LORD, are enthroned forever; your name endures to all generations.
¹³You will rise up and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to favor it; the appointed time has come.
¹⁴For your servants hold its stones dear, and have pity on its dust.
¹⁵The nations will fear the name of the LORD, and all the kings of the earth your glory.
¹⁶For the LORD will build up Zion; he will appear in his glory.
¹⁷He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.
¹⁸Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the LORD:
¹⁹that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the LORD looked at the earth,
²⁰to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die;
²¹so that the name of the LORD may be declared in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem,
²²when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the LORD.
²³He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days.
²⁴“O my God,” I say, “do not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations.”
²⁵Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
²⁶They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away;
²⁷but you are the same, and your years have no end.

²⁸The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

Psalm 102 is described in its superscription as a prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the LORD. This type of description is unusual among the psalms. It doesn’t indicate an author to attribute the psalm to, nor does it give instructions for its performance or a reference to a scriptural story that the psalm comes from. This psalm of a suffering one who is alienated from their body, from society, and ultimately from God may have been intended as a psalm that any suffering individual could recite at times where their situation seemed hopeless, and God’s help seemed far away. Imagery of impermanence, loneliness, pain, and shame permeate the complaint of the psalm, but like many psalms of complaint there is a turn towards hope. The psalmist intuits that the answer, “to human finitude and mortality is divine infinitude and immortality.” (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 754)

The opening language of the psalm resonates with appeals throughout the psalter as Rolf A. Jacobson notes:

The opening appeal to be heard employs language quite typical of these entreaties—hear my prayer, let my cry come unto you (39:12), do not hide your face (27:9; 143:7), turn your ear towards me (31:2; 71:2), make haste to answer me (69:17; 143:7) (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 751)

Although Rolf Jacobson attributes this to intentionally creating a generic composition for use in the community, the use of familiar language may also reflect a person shaped in the communal worship which utilizes these psalms. The language of prayer and faith is shaped in the worshipping community which shaped the psalmist’s faith and life. Yet, now in a time when the author is alienated from their own physical body, from the community, and from God, they turn to the words that shaped their life when they were physically, socially, and religiously whole.

The psalm moves between personal complaints about their own health and isolation, “I complaints” in Westermann’s terminology, complaints about the actions of isolation and persecution by those in the psalmist’s society, “they complaints”, and complaints about the way that God is treating the psalmist, “you complaints.”[1] The personal complaints begin with an image of transience that reminds me of Ecclesiastes frequently used term hebel (vanity, emptiness). Hebel literally means smoke, mist, or vapor but is often used metaphorically to refer to the emptiness of life.[2] Now for the psalmist their days pass away like smoke and their bones burn like a furnace. Their life down to their very bones is going up in smoke while their heart withers like grass and they are too far gone to even eat the bread that could give them strength. Their songs have turned to groans and their body now is transforming into a (barely) living skeleton. We don’t know if they were suffering from an illness, but they attribute their suffering to God’s judgment upon them. Their suffering is also done in isolation, they are like an unclean owl of the wastelands or a lonely bird on a roof. These lonely images of birds heighten the feeling of the psalm, for the sufferer is not only weak but they are abandoned.

The social complaints are also sharply worded as the psalmist’s unnamed name is synonymous with a curse among their enemies. Their personal weakness and isolation are viewed in the society as a curse from God, and enemies have taken advantage of this weakness. The only nourishment left for this abandoned one is the bread of ashes and the drink of tears. Yet, behind both the physical pain and suffering and the social isolation is the LORD. We are never told of any sin that this poet has committed, but they view their suffering because of God’s anger and distance. In the words of the psalm God has cast the suffering one aside and yet hope resides in God repenting from God’s attitude towards the psalmist, turning the face and hearing with the ear and responding with grace and healing.

In contrast to the evanescent position of the psalmist is the strength and might of the LORD. The psalmist now joins his fate to the action of God to have compassion on Zion. It is possible that this psalm originates in the time of the exile where there is hope for the rebuilding of Zion and rescue the people from the destitute position as exiles in a foreign land. Yet, even without the context of the Babylonian exile, the turn to hope is based on the faithfulness of God for the people and a belief that God’s anger lasts only a moment, but God’s favor is for a lifetime.[3] The poet’s strength may have been broken in the middle of their life by God’s action, but if God wills it will be renewed. The heavens and the earth which seem so permanent to humanity are like a garment that can easily be changed by the powerful and permanent God. God will continue to endure and only in God can this suffering one hope to find a renewed physical, social, and religious life. The psalmist claims their familial bond to the LORD the God of Israel and now awaits the parental turning of their God to the children of God’s servants.

[1] Rolf A. Jacobson notes this helpful pattern citing Westermann, The Psalms (54-57). (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 752)

[2] Psalm102 does not use the term hebel but the combination of words of impermanence create a similar resonance for me as Ecclesiastes.

[3] Psalm 30:5.

Psalm 70 God Help Me Quickly

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Psalm 70

Image from http://soulmagazine.org/he-heals-the-brokenhearted/

Psalm 70

¹Be pleased, O God, to deliver me. O LORD, make haste to help me!

² Let those be put to shame and confusion who seek my life. Let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire to hurt me.

³ Let those who say, “Aha, Aha!” turn back because of their shame.

⁴ Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. Let those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”

⁵ But I am poor and needy;

hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay!

Sometimes the only prayer that can be managed in a crisis is, “dear God, help! Please! Quickly!” That is the essence of this short psalm which appeals to God for deliverance. It is possible that Psalm 70 and 71 were originally designed to be joined together, there are a number of thematic and vocabulary linkages between the two psalms, and this psalm is also present with a few minor differences as the ending of Psalm 40. Yet, in the way we have received this Psalm in the psalter it stands alone as a brief and unresolved plea for help which calls on God to act quickly and decisively to save the petitioner.

The Psalm has an uneven chiastic structure[1] which I’ve attempted to show in the indentations above. As Beth Tanner helpfully illustrates:

Plea to hurry (v. 1)
The world as it is (v.2-3)
The world as it should be (v.4)
The world as it is (v. 5a)
Plea to hurry (v. 5b) (Nancy deClaisse-Walford 2014, 563)

The opening and closing verses share both vocabulary and theme (help, deliver(er), haste(n)) bracketing the brief psalm with an urgent cry for immediate help. The world the psalmist is experiencing is one where enemies seek to cause pain, ruin reputation, and destroy the life of this one crying for help. The psalmist asks for the shameful actions of their enemy to rebound upon these enemies causing them to be shamed. In a world as it should be the righteous who seek God know joy and are able to praise God, but in the world as it is experienced they find themselves appealing to God for deliverance from their oppressors. Psalm 70 ends with a repeated cry for immediate help and we sit with the psalmist in the time of waiting for God’s response.

Although most modern Christians don’t attend service on the Wednesday of Holy Week, this is the appointed psalm for that day and liturgically it applies this psalm to Jesus hearing the mocking words on the cross. The psalm makes sense in this setting of one being accused unjustly and calling out to the LORD for help, but it also applies to many other settings throughout the life of faith. Cries for God’s immediate response in a situation of crisis are a part of a life that trusts that God will deliver. Sometimes the shortest prayers are the ones that speak the clearest of the immediate need for help.

[1] A Chiasm is a poetic form which uses mirroring statements, vocabulary or themes.

Psalm 59 God’s Steadfast Love as an Alternative to the Dog-Eat-Dog Worldview

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Battle between Cimmerian cavalry, their war dogs, and Greek hoplites, depicted on a Pontic plate

Psalm 59 God’s Steadfast Love as an Alternative to the Dog-Eat-Dog World

¹Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me.
² Deliver me from those who work evil; from the bloodthirsty save me.
³ Even now they lie in wait for my life; the mighty stir up strife against me. For no transgression or sin of mine, O LORD,
⁴ for no fault of mine, they run and make ready. Rouse yourself, come to my help and see!
⁵ You, LORD God of hosts, are God of Israel. Awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. Selah
⁶ Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city.
⁷ There they are, bellowing with their mouths, with sharp words on their lips — for “Who,” they think, “will hear us?”
⁸ But you laugh at them, O LORD; you hold all the nations in derision.
⁹ O my strength, I will watch for you; for you, O God, are my fortress.
¹⁰ My God in his steadfast love will meet me; my God will let me look in triumph on my enemies.
¹¹ Do not kill them, or my people may forget; make them totter by your power, and bring them down, O Lord, our shield.
¹² For the sin of their mouths, the words of their lips, let them be trapped in their pride. For the cursing and lies that they utter,
¹³ consume them in wrath; consume them until they are no more. Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob. Selah
¹⁴ Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city.
¹⁵ They roam about for food, and growl if they do not get their fill.
¹⁶ But I will sing of your might; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been a fortress for me and a refuge in the day of my distress.
¹⁷ O my strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love.

Many of the Psalms in this section of the psalter are attributed to the time when David’s life is continuously under threat from his king and father-in-law Saul.[1] These desperate pleas to God, which can fit a number of circumstances that people encounter in a world, are an underutilized portion of Psalms. They are perhaps overlooked because they may appear too vengeful for some Christians, but they point to a resilient faith in the reality of God’s steadfast love in the midst of a world of dogged opposition. The psalmist trusts that God’s protection will allow them to see their opponents punished for their unjust violence they have done and will vindicate their continued trust in their God which allows them to opt out of the dog-eat-dog mindset of competitive violence.

God is the one who must deliver the psalmist from their situation. The psalm is a series of imperatives directed at God: deliver, protect, deliver, save, (1-2) rouse, come, see, awake, spare none, (4-5) make them totter, (11) and consume (twice in verse 13). Immediately the psalmist begins with an impassioned appeal for God to save them from dire circumstances that are created by enemies who are conspiring against them. These evil working and bloodthirsty ones continually create a world of conflict and violence for the poet despite their innocence. The psalmist emphasizes their innocence by utilizing the three major Hebrew words for ‘sin’[2] and declaring they are without fault, transgression, or sin. This three-fold appeal to the psalmist innocence is followed by a three-fold titling of God: LORD (the divine name of God) God of hosts (a militaristic image of God as the leader of armies) and God of Israel (the God of the chosen people). God is one who can be called upon by name, and yet has the power to aid in conflicted situation, and is also the God who stands with the chosen people in the midst of the nations. The psalmist trusts that the God that they call upon is able to save and deliver them from this world of trouble created by their persistent and unjust enemies.

The metaphor used in this psalm for the enemies is dogs. They prowl like a pack, and they wound with their words. They continue to prowl the city and utter their threatening howls which inform the poet that there is no time when they are free of their presence. These enemies consider themselves strong but all their growling, prowling, and howling ultimately evoke laughter from God. In Psalm 52:6 the righteous laughed at the foolish and violent enemies, but here it is God who laughs at these violent ones who take themselves and their power so seriously. Their strength when compared to the protective and sheltering strength of the God of Israel or the liberating strength of the God of Hosts is laughable, and their boasts are hollow. The faithful and innocent one trusts that God’s steadfast love (hesed) will ultimately be the final word and will put these dogged opponents in their place.

This prayer comes from the perspective of one who is struggling in an unjust world and is calling upon God to act decisively against their oppressors. Perhaps one of the reasons this Psalm is seldom used is the desire for vengeance against one’s enemies and there is some danger when those in a privileged position view themselves as oppressed and use that narrative to justify their own actions of oppression. Yet, in the Psalms the actor who restores the oppressed one to justice is always God. Here the psalmist wishes not for a quick removal of the enemy, but a staggering but not fatal blow where the enemy becomes the unwitting example of God’s justice that is not quickly forgotten. As Bellinger and Brueggemann can say appropriately, “even in its most confident faith Israel can be honest about its resentments and its hope for vengeance and retaliation.” (Brueggemann 2014, 266) The psalmist is maintaining their innocence and committing themselves to God’s steadfast love and justice.

This psalm again confronts us with the distance between the world as it is experienced by the psalmist in this moment of their life and the world as it should be under the steadfast love of God. As J. Clinton McCann can aptly summarize the world the psalmist experiences, “What we end up with is a dog-eat-dog world, a culture of cut-throat competition in which we’re convinced that no one will look out for us if we don’t look out for ourselves.” But the psalm points to “a deeper reality, an alternative world, which is drive not by the lust for power but by the power of love.” (NIB IV:914) In the belief of the psalmist, we may begin with the need for deliverance from the dog-eat-dog mindset of competitive violence. The final words in this psalm and in worldview of the psalmist is God’s steadfast love (hesed). The wise live their lives oriented towards this deeper reality where the lust for power will be proven foolish and the power of God’s steadfastlove will endure.

[1] The superscription refers 1 Samuel 19: 8-17 when Saul has David’s home watched and Michal (David’s wife and Saul’s daughter) helps David escape and deceives her father.

[2] NRSV translates these words as ‘transgressions,’ ‘sin,’ and ‘fault’ in verses three and four.

Psalm 55-A Desperate Prayer from an Unsafe Environment

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Apophysis-Betrayal (1footonthedawn at deviantart.com)

Psalm 55

To the leader: with stringed instruments. A Maskil of David.
¹ Give ear to my prayer, O God; do not hide yourself from my supplication.
² Attend to me, and answer me; I am troubled in my complaint. I am distraught
³ by the noise of the enemy, because of the clamor of the wicked. For they bring trouble upon me, and in anger they cherish enmity against me.
⁴ My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
⁵ Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.
⁶ And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest;
⁷ truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
⁸ I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.”
⁹ Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech; for I see violence and strife in the city.
¹⁰ Day and night they go around it on its walls, and iniquity and trouble are within it;
¹¹ ruin is in its midst; oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace.
¹² It is not enemies who taunt me — I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me — I could hide from them.
¹³ But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend,
¹⁴ with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God with the throng.
¹⁵ Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.
¹⁶ But I call upon God, and the LORD will save me.
¹⁷ Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he will hear my voice.
¹⁸ He will redeem me unharmed[1] from the battle that I wage, for many are arrayed against me.
¹⁹ God, who is enthroned from of old, Selah will hear, and will humble them — because they do not change, and do not fear God.
²⁰ My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me
²¹ with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords.
²² Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.
²³ But you, O God, will cast them down into the lowest pit; the bloodthirsty and treacherous shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you.

This Psalm is filled with unusual Hebrew words that account for the differences in wording among translations. Although individual words may present challenges the overall message of the words are clear. This is a desperate prayer for deliverance from an unsafe environment where human relationships have failed, trust has been violated, and the psalmist feels unsafe. It is a petition for God’s help. It is a cry for God to condemn those who have brought such pain. It bears witness to the psalmist grasping to their faith in God’s justice when others have proven faithless.

Many people can reflect on moments in their life when they can identify strongly with the words of this Psalm. For me, the words of this psalm take me back to a time when a dream had died, I was leading a congregation that was splitting apart due to conflict, and even home was no longer a healthy place as I attempted to deal with a betrayal by one I loved. It was a time where it felt like all the things that defined me had rejected me. My hopes for the future, my work, my place of worship, and even my family all had been impacted and the only thing I had left to hold on to was the faith that God would hear my cry in that moment, that the pain would eventually end, and that God would save me in a time when I could not save myself.

Perhaps the reason that the words in this Psalm are so difficult to translate is that the poet has to grasp for words in the midst of their pain which seem just out of reach. Deep pain seems to shatter our ability to narrate what is happening, the events become unspeakable. Yet, it is precisely this inability to speak about the trauma that one endures which can trap us within it. One of the gifts of scripture, particularly the Psalms and the prophets, is honest language which attempts to bear witness to the pain and suffering that are often a part of the life of the faithful. Being a religious person does not prevent one from experiencing conflict, betrayal, anxiety, fear, and even desiring to run away from one’s home or one’s vocation.

The Psalm begins with four verbs asking God to pay attention to the desperate prayer (Give ear, do not hide, attend, and answer) followed by a long list of troubles caused to this faithful one by the actions of the enemy/wicked. The righteous one is troubled, distraught, experiencing anguish in their heart and the terrors of death, fear, trembling. and horror overwhelm them, and their desire is to flee from the city, their home, and their responsibilities to some wilderness retreat. These early descriptions of the psalmist’s current condition seem in tension the affirmation later in the Psalm that “the LORD…will never permit the righteous to be moved” but they need to voice the full extent of their affliction before they can enter into the trust in God’s provision. J Clinton McCann highlights that many of the things the righteous one is experiencing are exactly what those opposed to God’s way and experiencing God’s judgment have experienced in the past:

“Terrors” (v.4) and “trembling” (v.5) are what the Egyptians experienced as a result of opposing God (see Exod 15: 15-16), and overwhelming horror is what Ezekiel promises as a result of God’s judgment (see Ezek 7:18). (NIB IV, 898)

Now in a world turned upside down by violence and betrayal the righteous are experiencing this at the hands of the wicked and only God can reestablish justice in this unjust environment. The psalmist, like the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 9:1-6, desires to be away from this place of betrayal and pain.

The city itself has become unsafe because of the actions of the wicked. There is no safe time and there is no safe place. Morning to night and from the walls of the city to the marketplace and even in the heart of the city the enemy cannot be avoided. The features of the city that are supposed to bring security are occupied by the enemy, commerce has been corrupted, and there is no place to go where violence, strife, and ruin have not transformed the city which was once a home into a prison for this petitioner. God must act in the midst of this injustice and the psalmist echoes God’s judgment of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 where the languages of the city are confused.

It is only in the middle of the psalm that we learn that the betrayer who has made their world unsafe is, “my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.” This intimate friend who has shared times both mundane and sacred with the speaker has become their oppressor. The transformation from friend to enemy has broken the petitioner’s world and they cry out for God to judge them like God judged Korah and his company that were taken alive into the realm of death. (Numbers 16: 30-33) Although Sheol as a place of the dead does not have the same meaning as Hell in much Christian thought, the injustice committed by this former close friend and companion has damaged the petitioner so deeply they want them removed from the sphere of the living. As uncomfortable as these words crying out for judgment may be, they need to be spoken and lifted up to God so that they can leave the speaker’s heart. Like Jeremiah 9:1-6 mentioned above, it is neighbors and kin who bring about, “Oppression upon oppression, deceit upon deceit!” (Jeremiah 9:6) and now the fate of these friends turned enemy belongs to God. The companion who laid hands on the psalmist and violated their covenant now finds themselves in the hands of the God who is faithful to the covenant.

God will judge the wicked and restore the just. The redemption which the psalmist longs for is not merely a removal of the wicked but also a relief from their anxiety and a complete return to wholeness and happiness. The only life after this experience of betrayal and oppression can come from the LORD who sustains the righteous. Ultimately for the healing to begin the environment must change and the only way the petitioner sees for that to happen in their current state is for the violent betrayer to be removed. There is no trust in one whose speech was smoother than butter and whose words were smoother than oil which hid a heart set on conflict and actions which cut deeply. For the psalmist human beings have proven untrustworthy, and it has driven this righteous one towards God. Perhaps in a place and time where the poet’s center of life has been returned to peace and wholeness there will be a space for reconciliation and forgiveness, but in the immediate aftermath of betrayal as the poet lives in fear and anxiety their horizon can only embrace a future without their betrayer.

[1] Literally “he will ransom in shalom (peace-wholeness) my nephesh (soul-center of life)” As Beth Tanner notes, “my very life will be protected, not just from harm, but will be restored to complete wholeness and happiness. (Nancy deClaisse-Walford 2014, 475)

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular