“Enough.” David cries out in Psalm 38. As he puts pen to paper he finds himself completely and overwhelmingly destitute. David feels the weight of shame in the light of the God who knows him thoroughly:

There is no soundness in my flesh
because of your indignation;
there is no health in my bones
because of my sin.
For my iniquities have gone over my head;
they weigh like a burden too heavy for me. (vv. 3-4)

Moreover, he is ostracized by friend and neighbor alike:

My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction,
and my neighbors stand far off. (v.11)

And enemies, like predators who always seek out the weakest and most isolated smell blood:

Those who seek my life lay their snares;
those who seek to hurt me speak of ruin,
and meditate treachery all day long.
 
But I am like the deaf, I do not hear;
like the mute, who cannot speak.
Truly, I am like one who does not hear,
and in whose mouth is no retort. (vv. 12-14).

Nothing is sound, the center isn’t just failing to hold, it has been ripped to shreds. Perhaps you know this darkness well. This place where everything in your life seems as if it is conspiring to snuff out your very life. And what’s worse, you know some of your wounds are self-inflicted but you feel as if even God is standing at a distance tsk-tsking saying, “See I told you so.”

David, mired in the midnight zone where no light enters, utterly crushed and spent in the tumult of his heart (v. 8). He is terminally sick in his body and yet the more pressing question for David is will this sickness of his soul be denied medical care by the great physician? If this shame will be chronic, he is ready to give in, to let go. In David’s cries many of us can see a mirror held up to our own depression and anxiety. The feeling that it will never end. The obsession with relief, David says:

O Lord, all my longing is known to you;
my sighing is not hidden from you.
My heart throbs, my strength fails me;
as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me. (vv.9-10).

Yet as the wheel turns on this cruel carousel, David’s one concern, his only resolve is to know that he is not forever forgotten by God. With the last ounces of fight in his lungs, he cries out to God.

Do not forsake me, O LORD;
O my God, do not be far from me;
make haste to help me,
O Lord, my salvation. (vv. 21-22)

We only see this psalm from one side, the side of David’s pain and internal anxiety. But dear reader, we have a whole Bible to listen in on this conversation from God’s side of the line and I want to offer you this word of hope today.

Even if you don’t have any fight left, God is fighting for you.

Even if you feel utterly destitute, God is healing you.

Even if you feel that your shame will ever define you, God is drawing near to you.

Even if you feel forsaken, God is with you.

In the midst of a global pandemic, racial reckoning (maybe), polarized politics (and all the guns), and an impending housing crisis (oh, gosh, I hope not). Psalm 37 is a word in season. Our culture is not built for the long view. Eugene Peterson, nearly thirty years ago, labeled the American world “an instant society” and things have only accelerated since then. Now our culture moves at the speed of the 5G refresh. What’s worse, not only do our minds encounter informational hurdles at a rate far too swift for our consciousness to clear, we also receive earth-shaking, and often shattering, news updates sandwiched in between banal gossip and sweet updates about our friends’ kids and vacations. It all conspires like a torture technique, wearing us down, robbing us of sleep or soundness and mind, and whispering all along: you’re not going to make it.

Psalm 37 is the biblical equivalent of Julian of Norwich’s famous, and often trivialized dictum, “All is well and the manner of all things shall be well.” David, now advanced in years, writes out of the rich wealth of his life with God saying:

I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending, and their children become a blessing (v. 25).

David reassures, not only does God take care of those who put him and his ways first, their lives are a fountain of the blessings of God both for neighbors in the present and generations in the future. The constant presence of the wicked in this psalm helps us to see, David’s day is just as gilded as our own, evil manifesting itself in the only tired tropes it knows: money, power, etc. etc. But David, from the opening line of the psalm, frames his vision with his patient wisdom: “do not fret” (vv. 1, 7, 8). Do not fret over the actions of vindictive politicians, do not fret over self-serving leaders, do not fret over the designs of those who delight in chaos. Do not allow yourself to be mired in the quicksand of anger and wrath. It only leads you to become like that which you despise.

Instead of spinning your wheels trying to reverse course on the spinning of the news cycles, David invites us to the subversive disciplines of trust (v. 3a), doing good (v. 3b), delight (v. 4), giving in the face of shortage (v.25) and perhaps the most counterintuitive of all—stillness (v. 7). Now, lest this be seen as escapist religion, happily hanging our heads in the clouds while the world burns, David reminds us, this wild earth is the theater of action, but where are often mistaken is it’s not primarily us who act. It is God:

Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday (v. 6)… for the arms of the the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous (v. 17). For the Lord loves justice, he will not forsake his faithful ones (v. 25).

In troubled times, it is tempting to find scapegoats or to play the savior but our first call is to stillness. Salvation is always received. Ours is a day that calls for courage, the courage of trust, doing good, delight, giving and stillness. Courage to act starts with courage to remain:

The salvation of the the righteous is from the Lord; he is their refuge in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and rescues them from the wicked, and saves them, because they take refuge in him (vv. 39-40).