Yesterday our church group read Psalm 6 together.
A psalm of lament, the prose is interrupted abruptly at one point with, “But you–how long, o Lord?”
It seems to me that we, in our day and time, are more apt to ask, “Why?” as though it’s a strange occurrence that bad things should happen to us.
I wonder if we’re asking the wrong question, based on the wrong assumption?
If God is primarily defined as the God who is in relationship with a given people based on certain acts of salvation, then the surprise is not that bad things happen, but that when bad things happen to that people God might let them sweat it out for a while before intervening to set things right.
Do we, because of an abstract notion of God as “good” spring to the question of “Why?”, too little remembering the narrated identity of our God?
How long, O lord?
Or, perhaps better now, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”
Definitely one of the most interesting questions/reflections for the week for me. I’ll be chewing on that one for a good while. Hats off.
I think one important thing here is that the “how long” here clearly implies the virtue of patience with suffering for believers. Patience with the timing of God’s work seems to me to be a much more important theme in the scriptures than many of us are comfortable with.
On this point, as on so many others, I am deeply indebted to Stanley Hauerwas’s thinking, particularly his language about living “out of control.” It is worth reflecting on that the psalmist does not ask, “what should I do now?” or, “how do I get myself out of this mess?”