How long?
| How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; 4 my enemy will say, "I have overcome him," and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me. (Psalms13:1-6) |
Although we cannot deduce the exact circumstances, we can identify with the emotions David is going through. But we also find ourselves surprised and taken aback at his candour as he laments his situation to God.
Very few of us are comfortable in "telling it like it is" when we pray. We tend to sanitise our prayers, keeping them polite, respectful and restrained. We are comfortable confessing our sins and asking for forgiveness and we will pray for our needs and the needs of others.
But what if it feels as though our prayers are hitting the ceiling? What if nothing improves even though we have prayed and prayed and prayed? What if it seems that our enemies get all the lucky breaks and God has not "brought any light to our eyes"??
Most of us keep praying the same sanitised prayers through the famous stiff-upper-lip...
Not David!
He gets disarmingly real with God. Look at his four "How longs"
- How long will You forget me? (You're forgetful)
- How long will You hide Your face? (You've neglected me)
- How long must I wrestle with thoughts and sorrow? (You don't care)
- How long will my enemy triumph over me (You can't seem to protect me)
The beautiful thing is that David does not get struck by lightning when he prays these things. He's effectively accused God of being forgetful, neglectful, uncaring and unprotective. And God lets him "throw his toys out of the cot"!
Why? Because God wants us to trust Him enough to be completely real and honest with Him. This is what David feels and although this isn't what God is really like, the feelings are real for the one in the grip of trouble. For David to vent and sound off like this is an expression of his absolute conviction that he is safe in the hand of God and beloved in His sight.
This is why he can express the confidence and hope that he does in the last two verses. If he can trust God with his tattered emotions, he knows he can trust God with anything. David knows that God won't withhold His love just because David brings his wobbly-faith crisis to the Right Place.
Do you trust God enough to be real with him?
