The Psalms - Herbert O'Driscoll

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such as this reveal for all of us the presence or absence of inner resources. One of the greatest gifts of the Book of Psalms may be that it takes us to such moments of human experience again and again. The psalmist fully shares a sense of desperation, a feeling of not being able to cope. Nothing is held back. As readers, we are allowed into the inner sanctum of a life. We watch someone’s agony.

      But we also watch as recovery begins, and it comes with the realization of the grace of God. “You, O Lord, are a shield about me … I wake … because the Lord sustains me. I do not fear.” This realization turns into an almost savage energy. “Strike all my enemies across the face … break the teeth of the wicked.” Hearing this may at first appall us. Nowadays we tend not to allow ourselves so free an expression of deep resentment.

      Even though the psalms speak to us from a culture that routinely indulges in extreme language, nevertheless we are being pointed to a fundamental truth. To possess a stubborn conviction that God is faithful in every circumstance can make all the difference between personal disintegration and recovery.

      The timeless message of this song comes to us strong and clear in its last verse. “Deliverance belongs to the Lord.”

      Consider a serious frustration in your life. Ask God to show you a way through your trouble. Consider someone you know who is suffering a serious frustration in their life. Ask God to be with them and to show them a way through their suffering.

      Many are saying, Oh, that we might see better times!”…

       You have put gladness in my heart

       more than when grain and wine and oil increase.

      These days we tend to dialogue a great deal with ourselves— questioning, examining, analyzing, blaming, agonizing. For the psalmist it is more natural to dialogue with God. So when he feels “hard-pressed,” and cries out for mercy and for his prayer to be heard, it is the voice of God that responds.

      Obviously God is feeling a little out of patience, not only with the psalmist, but with human nature in general! “How long will you worship dumb idols and run after false gods?” God seems to be suggesting that this particular mortal has his values confused, perhaps putting too much emphasis on material things.

      The psalmist’s response is a hasty and nervous compliment paid to this obviously disgruntled deity. “The Lord does wonders for the faithful.” To which God offers a very tart, if not threatening, response. “Tremble then, and do not sin,” and suggests that the psalmist go away and do some hard thinking about his conduct. “Speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.” By this time we see a rather chastened supplicant.

      The psalmist’s thinking now takes another direction. “Many are saying, Oh, that we might see better times!’” This plea expresses a very understandable and contemporary longing that echoes in almost every corner of our own society. So we need to take note of the psalmist’s approach. It begins with a short prayer. “Lift up the light of your countenance upon us, O Lord.” This leads to a complete change of tone and attitude, as if the very act of turning to God becomes itself a source of hope and new life.

      There is also the realization that what the psalmist really needs is not more material things, but the grace that comes from the presence and power of God to uplift, encourage, and transform. Not only does he cry out, “You have put gladness in my heart,” but, as if surprised at his own discovery, he adds “[this gladness] is more than when grain and wine and oil increase.”

      Perhaps we are being told something that can be expressed in a slight adaptation of a well-known phrase used in political commentary. We often hear or read the trenchant remark, “Its the economy, stupid.” It would seem that this psalm is suggesting the very opposite: “It’s not the economy, stupid.” Beyond economic problems, important though they be, there is a greater issue—our relationship with God.

      Consider some material things that your life is strongly built around. How could they possibly be obstructing your relationship with God? How could they possibly serve to enhance your relationship with God? Ask God to inform your mind and heart.

      All who take refuge in you will be glad;

      they will sing out their joy for ever.

      In his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman shows why the worlds of the West and the Middle East find it difficult to understand one another. One reason is that, in Middle Eastern life, the quality of forgiveness, or the refusal to act in response to being wronged or offended, can easily be taken for weakness, and can even lead to further attack.

      Again and again the psalmist comes before God to plead a case, and the issue is almost always the same. Enemies surround him. He feels that he has done no wrong to deserve this. He beseeches God for help and, in the same breath, calls down the wrath of God on those who afflict him. “Those who lie in wait for me … there is no truth in their mouth; there is destruction in their heart. Their throat is an open grave … Declare them guilty, O God.”

      Encountered repeatedly, this pattern becomes troubling to our modern ears. We begin to ask if perhaps the psalmist is projecting his own faults on to others. But something else in the pattern brings us up short. We find it here in the lines, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, and evil cannot dwell with you. Braggarts cannot stand in your sight … You destroy those who speak lies; the bloodthirsty and the deceitful, O Lord, you abhor.”

      The reason for the psalmist’s intense hatred of all that he regards as evil is not his imagined personal purity, but his blinding vision of the purity of God. Anything that offends this purity also offends the psalmist as a believer in this God. To him the universe makes no sense if God is other than this kind of absolute purity.

      For the psalmist, certain things follow from this view. Either one is the friend or the enemy of this God. And the enemy of this God is therefore one’s own enemy, toward whom one can hurl every condemnation with a sense of absolute justification. This is the world of the psalmist. It is one in which we can partially but not wholly live. Nevertheless it is a world that has much spiritual insight to give us.

      This psalm calls us to come before God, not casually as our Western minds so often do, but with the thought, “I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you.”

      Again, this psalm offers a beautiful and grace-giving promise that we tend to ignore in our frenzied and driven activism: “All who take refuge in you will be glad; they will sing out their joy for ever.” These are the gifts of this psalm.

      What is your understanding about the nature of God? How committed are you to those virtues that you attribute to God? Ask God for greater understanding and commitment to realize those virtues in your life. Pray that all people may seek the will of God.

      The Lord has heard my supplication;

      the Lord accepts my prayer.

      The more we read the psalms, the more we become aware of their deep intensity. Whether it be joy or fear, depression or anxiety, or any other human emotion, these emotions are never felt mildly in the world of the psalms. Nobody in the psalms ever says, “I feel rather depressed today” or “I’m a little worried about such and such.” Instead one cries out, as the psalmist does here, “I drench my bed and flood my couch with tears” or “My spirit shakes with terror.”

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