Psalm 13

To the leader. A Psalm of David.
1   How long, O LORD? Will you forget me         forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
2   How long must I bear pain in my soul,
    and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3   Consider and answer me, O LORD my God!
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep         of death,
4   and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
    my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
5   But I trusted in your steadfast love;
    my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6   I will sing to the LORD,
    because he has dealt bountifully with me.

Daily Prayer (based on Psalm 13:1)

Dear Lord, my head tells me that You never will forget me, that You are always watching over me, that You are fully faithful. Yet sometimes it doesn't seem that way. It can feel as if You've forgotten me, as if You've turned away. O Lord, I know you have Your reasons, and I believe You always do what's right. But, honestly, I wish sometimes You were more visible, more obvious. Faith is hard sometimes, Lord. I can accept this, but still I long to see You face to face. Until that day, help me to trust in You always.

Postscript

One of the shocking things in the Psalms is the audacity of the psalmists, even their willingness to flirt with what we might call theological incorrectness. Take Psalm 13:1, for example. Surely the psalmist knows that God will not forget him forever. And surely he knows that God has not actually stopped paying attention to him. Yet the Psalms do not use the language of tidy systematic theology. Rather, they often employ the messy, gritty, gut-wrenching language of genuine faith, complete with ambiguities and doubts. To be sure, there is a place for careful, precise language, such as when one is doing systematic theology. But the Psalms also give us freedom to worry less about our words and more about the authenticity of our hearts before God as we pray.

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Except for the Scripture text, all material of The Daily Psalm Copyright © 2006 by Mark D. Roberts

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The Scripture text used in The Daily Psalm is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved