By the time we were into last year’s first lock down on March 23, we were well into Lent and heading towards Easter. It didn’t stop some Christians complaining tongue in cheek “I never thought I would have to give up so much for Lent.” A year on the not so funny jokes continue. Someone announced on Facebook, “I’m giving up unnecessary travel and all indoor visits to other households.” At best these attempts at humour raise a tired smile. The truth is, the realities we are all living with have seriously reduced our readiness to smile, let alone laugh.
This has been a year of doing without, of lost freedoms, and we have become far too familiar with inner feelings of anxiety, loneliness, boredom and other emotional deprivations. These days when folk ask how we are getting on, at least part of the answer is that precise and peculiarly Scottish word, scunnered!
Quite a lot of the Psalms describe that feeling of being scunnered, when the Psalmist has had enough, but the hard stuff keeps coming. “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me…my tears have been my food day and night.”
If you’re scunnered, read the Psalms, for two reasons. First, whatever it is you’re feeling and thinking, it’s there in the Psalms, and it is prayed to God. Second, the Book of Psalms is like a pharmacy for the soul, pointing us towards those restorative thoughts and practices that will help us move from where we are to a firmer foothold, a better place, a different standpoint to view the life we are living.
The great Reformer John Calvin recommended reading and praying the Psalms as a way of understanding our hearts and speaking to God about the best and worst that happens to us:
“There is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men and women are wont to be agitated.”
When we read Psalm 42 carefully, which means prayerfully, this depressed and troubled Psalmist shows us how to be honest with God. He doesn’t feel guilty about being sick of the way life is, and he doesn’t try to say what he doesn’t feel. He says it like it is. Thirst, tears, downcast, waves and breakers have swept over him, he feels forgotten, mourns the life he used to enjoy, disturbed and upset – Calvin is right, all the negatives we can think of are right here in a prayer to God.
But that’s only half the story. And often when we are scunnered, it’s because we are only telling ourselves half the story. Here’s what else is in Psalm 42:
“These things I remember…how I used to go with the crowds…with shouts of joy and thanksgiving.” (v4) This has been a year like no other we have lived through, with all the losses we have each experienced. But God loves us no less. God is no less working his purposes towards our healing and wholeness and salvation. Alongside our complaints about how life is right now, take time to remember the blessings that, despite everything, have not been absent throughout this past year.
“Put your hope in God for you shall yet praise him…,” (v 5) Yes this has been a tough year. But, our hope for life and for eternity is in the eternal love and redeeming power of God, our Creator and Saviour. In under six weeks we will be celebrating Easter. “It’s Good Friday but Sunday is coming.” Hope is one of the most powerful antidotes to that loss of impetus and interest in life that comes from having to deal with more than we feel able to cope with. I love that defiant little word “yet” – “you shall yet praise him”. In the end, after all, when the world does its worst, there will yet be reason to praise. “Yet” is only one letter different from Yes. And the resurrection is God’s ultimate and final Yes! to life, yours and mine.
“By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, at night his prayer is with me – a prayer to the God of my life. ( v8) At a time of isolation, anxiety and exhaustion, our minds fed with 24/7 coverage of Covid, it is especially important to remember who is ultimately in charge. God commands his steadfast love by day, and at night his concern and compassion surround us. “God is my rock! That is true, rock solid true. No matter what we feel at any one time. God’s loving concern is steadfast, faithful, rock solid, and energised by loving purposes for you, and all that he has made.
Yes there’s a lot that can get us down. But remember God’s blessings as well as our troubles, hope in God because we will yet praise him together, and whatever happens, God commands his steadfast love and he is the God of your life,
Beautiful words of encouragement! Thanks for linking the Psalms to the current crisis & practical areas of our lives.
Posted by: Russ Ross | March 02, 2021 at 01:59 AM