I am languishing; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror. My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O LORD—how long?  (Ps. 6vv2-3).

The psalmist, presumably David, in Psalm 6 is not just having a bad day.  He is in the throes of death.  He goes on:  For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?    I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.  My eyes waste away because of grief; they grow weak because of all my foes.  (vv. 5-7).  David is in a downward spiral, drowning in his tears every night, losing his vision either because his eyes are red, dry and all cried-out or they are calling it quits because they have just seen too much.  I have certainly felt this way recently.  On every side, we are constantly bombarded with unspeakable suffering in our world.  Whether we are enduring it ourselves or simply empathizing from afar, it’s a wonder our eyes don’t all just up and retire saying, “I’ve seen enough.”

But this psalm and thus the circumstances of the psalmist take an unexpected turn.  The psalmist has been crying out to the Lord, “How long?” (v. 3) and now he speaks with a confidence that seems to come from nowhere:  Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping. The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror; they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame.  (vv. 8-10).  Why the sudden bravado when as recently as v. 7 he was drowning in tears?  Simply, the psalmist knows that heaven hears him.  He is assuaged, strengthened, emboldened by this one simple expression of faith that God hears when he cries and is able to work mightily in his circumstances. We are not told if the psalmist receives this word from the Lord.  Presumably he does not and rather is operating from the confidence of his past dealings with God.  He knows that in previous trials, the Lord has heard him when he has cried out and has responded.  But most of all he knows that he does not serve a God who is far off but rather a loving, attentive Father—a God who hears.  Here this is the psalmist’s sole hope, that heaven hears him.  And it changes everything.

For meditation:
-What is causing you anguish, grief, anxiety, or anger?  What would it look like to bring that before the Lord and to trust that he hears you?
-When has God acted in your life in an unforeseen way?
-Notice how the psalms give voice to genuine pain in our lives.  They enable us both to name our suffering and to frame it within the hope that we have in God.

Verse for meditation:   The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD accepts my prayer.

In reflecting on Psalm 2, we were reminded in the absurdity of trying to gain control of our worlds by sacrificing sleep.  In Psalm 3, we see this lived out.  The psalmist states:

5 I lie down and sleep; I wake again, for the LORD sustains me. 6 I am not afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

The psalmist, after taking note of all the enemies assembled against him, surrounding him, places himself in the most vulnerable human state. He goes to sleep.  If any situation would call for a stop-at-nothing workaholic approach, it would seem that being the target of the hatred and vitriol of thousands would be such a scenario.  And yet the psalmist doesn’t try to fight his way out, he doesn’t even lose sleep over the furor arrayed outside his door.  He lays down.  From Genesis 1, we can gather a few things that are true of all humanity.

1. We are not God.  Seems like a no-brainer but I am always amazed how often I forget that simple fact.
2. A seemingly subtle fact that the Jewish people still recognize in the way they observe major holidays:  the days do not start or end with us.  There is evening and morning, each day begins when we cease from our work to spend time with family, to eat, to sleep.  Every day is a gift.
3. Every woman and man is made in the image of God, an icon, singularly shaped by God to reflect the beauty of our Creator.
4. We are creatures designed with the task of ruling and stewarding the creation of God.  The image of God is not simply a characteristic of being human it is a vocation to live into.
5. In all of this we are blessed by God.  As the old cliche goes, we are “blessed to be a blessing.”  God has lavished his love and attention upon us in order that we might live rightly in relationship with him in worship.  I think it no small detail that in Genesis 1, the work is the worship.
6. It all culminates in sabbath.  The Creator rests and all of creation joins him.  This is the Shalom, the world at peace joyfully ceding all that we would do to sustain us over to Creator, entrusting ourselves to God.

Returning to Psalm 3, the question for us today is where are our battles raging?  Notice the psalmist never downplays the very real threat that his enemies present.  If anything, he emphasizes just how strong they are to demonstrate that the stakes are nothing short of life and death.  What sorts of stress are you enduring at this moment?   Perhaps your enemies are surrounding you: pressures at work, bosses or coworkers who want to see you fail, financial troubles, marital strife.  This psalm tells us that the strongest thing we can possibly do, in response to these overwhelming forces, is simply to entrust ourselves to God.  Sabbath is not passive.  Sabbath is a form of radical resistance.

Questions for meditation:
Where do you feel the pressure to ignore rest?
What does rest look like to you—just as Sabbath is not passive, resting is not simple inaction, it is time attending to God and trusting that he sustains us.

Verse for meditation today:  Psalm 3v3-But you, O LORD, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

In Luke ch. 11, we are welcomed into the scene that truly encapsulates the way that we are formed to be more like Jesus.  Jesus’ disciples are with Jesus as he is praying.  Listening to Christ pray is like listening to Bach play the piano or watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel.  The disciples pray along by listening and then they beg of Jesus:  Lord teach us to pray (v. 2).

1.  Prayer Is An Innate Skill.  Large swaths of the evangelical church in America have done their congregants a great disservice in failing to foster this paradigm-shifitng request— “Lord teach us to pray”— in their congregants.  For many Christians in America, it is simply assumed by churches that you will automatically know how to pray.   The disciples sitting near Jesus as he prayed to his Father were no novices in prayer.  They were first century Jews who prayed the psalms throughout their daily lives and recited psalms and corporate prayers in the synagogue.  But something about Jesus’ prayer was still so foreign and novel to them that they knew the prayers they had learned and the prayers of Jesus were of a different character.  Their response asking for help is truly the first prayer:  we want to pray, Lord teach us how to pray.  Prayer is the language of the Kingdom of God.  It is not foreign in grammar or vocabulary but in content.

2.  I have to come up with the words to pray.  The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.  He responds with his most famous prayer, the Lord’s prayer, and these words have been life-giving in prayer for the Church ever since.  But the reality is, Matthew 7 and Luke 11 are not the only places that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to pray.  The psalms immerse us in a school of prayer.  The psalms also run the entire range of the human condition from rapturous praise to hopeless abandonment and everywhere in between.  Consider the end of the lament longing for home in Psalm 137:  “O daughter Babylon, you devastator!  Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!  Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock! (vv.8-9).”  Are the psalms condoning violence against innocent children?  How could something like this be in the Bible about a God of love?  But those questions miss the point.  This psalm is not promoting violence in God or in humanity but transparency between the divine and women and men.  The psalms give us words for even our most base and heinous impulses because the psalms are shaping us towards a life that is fully alive to God.

3.  If I have to work at prayer it becomes a “work.”  The reason most people struggle so consistently with prayer is because they fail to embrace the struggle.   Jesus’ response to the disciples’ request, “Lord teach us to pray,” is a prayer for daily bread, for daily forgiveness, for daily strength to overcome the evil one.  There is not a prayer that will suffice for all of time.  We must see each day afresh in the grace and provision of God.  Think of your most valuable relationships.  It is likely that there was an ease, an instant connection that felt a lot like grace, that paved the way for the relationship at the beginning.  But that relationship has only strengthened and deepened to the extent that you both have invested in the relationship.  There is not less grace present in the relationship because you have worked at it over the years.  If anything, you have found more grace because of the work.  Prayer is like this because the grounds for all our work in prayer is the grace of Jesus.  Remember where we started in Luke ch. 11?  The disciples long to pray in response to hearing Jesus pray.  All of our work in prayer is a response to our listening in on the love shared between Father, Spirit, and Son.  We ask, “Lord teach us to pray,” in order to be immersed in the eternal love of the Trinity.