Psalm 13: How Long?

If you were trying to reach a certain place in the world, you would chart a course (or more likely you would do what the voice on your phone tells you to do).  Much in the same way, the destinations of our lives determine the course of our lives.  Just as our journeys are shaped by our destination, our lives are shaped by our hopes.  David asks the Lord, “How long?”

For many of us when we consider our hopes and dreams, we think of the positive ends we want for our own lives, our careers, and our family.  But David’s hopes in Ps. 13 rise up from the pit of despair.   He doesn’t have time for goals and vision, he just needs God to show up, right now.  He needs God, not something that resembles him.^[1]C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

This psalm invites us in two directions.  First, we are to be people who pray this prayer on behalf of those who are in a situation similar to David’s.  David’s life is under the threat of imminent death.  He cries out in fear and in frustration, “How long until you fix this? Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death.”^[2]vv.1-3   Paul describes the very fabric of creation echoing the anguish of David’s prayers.^[3]Romans 8vv21-25  All around us, there are those praying, “How long until I see you?”  “How long until I am healed?” “How long until there is joy?” When we pray this psalm on behalf of our neighbors, we bear one another’s burdens and partner with God in their redemption and healing.

The second direction is more introspective.  What are you hoping for right now?  What’s the thing that seems to elude you, standing off in the distance just out of reach?  What direction is your life pointed towards?  Do you long with the aches of how long?  Do you long to see the Lord face to face?  Are your hopes heaven-shaped?  In the psalms, we are invited towards a reorientation of our whole lives.  Ps. 13 is shaping our hopes around the things of God, putting our own self-centered dreams through the fire of God’s desires and heart for the world.  What emerges from the furnace is a life of purified gold that seeks the Lord first and receives every gift from his hand with gratitude and worship.

For meditation:
-Where is God trying to reshape and reorient your longings?
-Who in your life do you need to cry out with in solidarity, “How long?”
-This prayer is a good spiritual discipline to apply when, as we so often are, you encounter overwhelming suffering and devastation.  When you are faced with the catastrophes of our world, train your immediate response to be a simple prayer:  how long?  This initiates us into the suffering of our world and orients our hopes towards the one who has overcome it.