Psalm 40: Quicksand
Psalm 40 is a dissenting voice against the prevailing cultural mythology. To a world vacillating between the poles of bootstrap theology and abandoned helplessness, Psalm 40 offers testimony and exhortation: wait on the Lord. David was in quicksand, sinking, slowly swallowed by the soil (v. 2). The hard thing about quicksand is that every impulse urges us to struggle, to scrape our way out but that only results in falling deeper into the mire. When our circumstances start to spiral out of control we clamor and grasp for any sort of foothold. We hear the assured self-help wisdom of those who captained their own fate, we look for quick fixes, handmade gods, remedies that swear that they will take away the pain (just don’t look too closely at the side effects).
If that doesn’t work we start negotiating with the divine, we regard the cosmos as a marketplace… “help me and I’ll do this for you…” “get me out of this and I’ll never do that again.” We offer our promises, hoping that heaven will hear and help. We say anything we can. Jesus warned us, “when you pray don’t heap up empty phrases” as some desperate attempt to secure the ear of God. Jesus didn’t say that because there’s something inherently wrong with clamoring for help, with crying out with our words; but rather because Jesus was inviting us into a much less anxious approach, to pray simply trusting that God loves us, he hears us, and he will never leave us.
Psalm 40 declares “sacrifice and offering you did not desire” (v. 6a), life is not defined by how much we can do or give for God, life is a gift, expressed in what God has done for us. David writes, “Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you”(v. 5a). Rather than climbing our way out of our quicksand by our many declarations of fidelity and empty promises, God wants to carve out listening ears, a waiting heart. He wants to fill our lives to overflowing in awe of wonders “too many to declare”“ with grateful hearts pouring forth “a new song” “a hymn of praise.”
David knows well the game of trying to play personal messiah and he’s offering us not simply wisdom of a better path, but salvation, a salvation not achieved, but received.
Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false Gods (v. 4).
In the quicksand of life there is a God who lifts us out, not just saving us from our peril but blessing us in the midst of it. Wait on the Lord.