Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-117 Sunday 22 Jun 2003

Psalms on Sundays Reading: Psalm 13 – A LONGING FOR GOD

Are you impatient enough for the coming of the kingdom? ‘Lord give me patience, not apathy.’

How long? This psalm might chime with your mood, or your situation, today – or it might not, and so will need to be used in some other way.

We could meditate on it, and then file it away so that we can call on it as part of our prayer repertoire when we need it. We could enter its world imaginatively, and use the results of that experience to offer ministry to others. Finally, as Michael Wilcock suggests, we could read it as Christ might have recalled it in the hours leading up to his death (The Message of Psalms 1-72,IVP), just as he called out in the words of Psalm 22 (Matt 27:46). In that way we will remind ourselves that the Psalms were Christ’s prayer book, and try to use them as he did.

The pattern is helpful and simple. First, there are four verses of lament and complaint, begging God to do something, say something, remember him. Then come two verses expressing trust, with a neat triad of tenses: past, present and future. These three together indicate that, whatever we might feel at the time, God has been good to us, is a present reality in salvation, and will continue to be a source of joy. Interestingly, there is no note of repentance, no anxiety that guilt might be the problem (1 Pet 2:20).

‘How long?’ the cry of David on the run, is also the cry of the early church under persecution (Rev 6:10). and should it not also be the prayer of God’s people in every situation?

Pray a series of prayers beginning ‘How long, O Lord?’. Does it feel strange, or helpful, to pray in that mode?

– Roger Pooley

Copyright Scripture Union, 2003, Encounter with God

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